By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

A FOOD delivery company is investigating after several of its customers reported suspicious charges to their credit or debit cards after using the business for grocery purchases due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Island Direct Nassau came under fire this weekend after some customers took to social media, complaining of charges they didn’t make showing up on their bank accounts after the delivery service was used. However, a company representative said an internal investigation found no data breach on their end.

Island Direct marketing representative, Odaz Lightbourne said officials started receiving complaints from several customers on Friday, claiming their cards had been compromised.

Less than 15 customers, she said, have made complaints of fraudulent activity to the company to date.

After launching an internal investigation into the matter, Ms Lightbourne said officials found there was no breach of security at Island Direct. However, if required, she said officials will turn the matter over to police.

“We did investigations on our end from a security standpoint and we found that on our back-end we did not discover any breaches,” she added.

“However, we did find that persons who reported their cards being compromised, they are all in a particular region and so we do have that report and that information all compiled and we will gladly hand that over to the police and to their banker as well to complete this investigation, because we do want to get to the bottom of this.

“…We take every single customer extremely seriously, but we have thousands of customers that we actually service and hundreds of orders and the breach has affected to date, less than 15 (people).”

The Caribbean company operates in Nassau, Bahamas; Barbados; St Croix and St Thomas, according to its website.

Asked yesterday what may have gone wrong, Ms Lightbourne said she could not say as the matter is still under investigation.

She said: “I don’t want to speculate on what may have went wrong, but again we noticed from our investigations, that the persons that reported the breach were confined to a particular geographical area, so we did find that in our passing.

“…We have not had any breaches or issues on the other islands and it’s unfortunate because so far, the Bahamas is one of our smaller territories so it’s a difficult time.”

Adding that officials are committed to resolving the matter and locating the source of the security breach, Ms Lightbourne is urging anyone who may be experiencing issues to directly contact the company.

“We’ll be corresponding with them between today and tomorrow and subsequent follow ups for as high as we need to go - to their banks and also to the police, if it requires to be necessary to get to the bottom of it.”

As to those who feel that they may have been overcharged, Ms Lightbourne explained that the company increased its prices due to hiring more workers to meet large demands by respective customers.

“There were also complaints on our page about charges being slightly different than they were in the past and that’s because we recently had to change slightly the way that our business was actually being run because of the growth,” she told this newspaper.

“So, prior to now, it was done on a shoestring kind of execution where there were only a few shoppers and pickers and that’s what happened but obviously, as the demand increased, we had to go and increase staffing.

“So, we hired some 120 plus persons locally (and) all Bahamians to add into or workforce into order to go ahead and execute on these orders.”

She continued: “…So, there was quite a bit of shifts that happened all at once in order to compensate for the demand and unfortunately, just like what happened with Amazon recently and them hiring 100,000 persons and having some issues with customers and their delays and deliveries and credit card issues etc, we are just experiencing that on a much smaller scale.”

“Even though the story went quite viral, the number of persons impacted is actually very miniscule compared to the number of customers that we have and transactions that we have.”

Despite this, Ms Lightbourne said the two-year-old Caribbean company, which operates in several islands in the region, is devoted to providing the best service to its customers.

She added that officials are also looking at other payment options where persons don’t have to use their cards directly.

“I just want to let the customers know that they are our primary concern and their safety and the convenience and the deliverability so that, as much information as we can get from them, it will aid us in resolving this issue and also, we’re looking for talent to help facilitate and make sure the company can thrive the way that they should ,” she told The Tribune.