Account verification for purchase a $36 product

[Navitor]

I tried to purchase Sephora product to give for my friend in Texas, but the website does not allow me to make a payment, saying i need to contact them via phone/chat online to do account verification first.

I'm more than happy to do so, but instead of doing any verification, the customer support asked me to type out 4 digits of my credit card (which is already saved and made the default payment in my Sephora account) AND CVV of that card ?!

I asked why not let me do the payment on my side or send a payment link to email, the customer support refused and said it's the ONLY way to do verification and to purchase the product BY SEPHORA SYSTEM!

THIS IS A BIG REDFLAG because once you hand your cvv out, they technically has information of full your card and they can buy anything they want with those information! And if they don't then it not any less dangerous, once hacker hack database of Sephora (which will happen sooner or later, we never know) so hacker can have your credit card, your name, date issue through system itself and cvv through the chatlog.

Careful with this brand!

[keelybt]

@Navitor I'm sorry to hear this! While we occasionally need to verify information such as billing address and phone number, you should never be asked for your CVV.  It looks like your private messages are currently turned off. Please send me a private message with your registered email address so I can look into this further. You can adjust your account settings (the gear icon) on a desktop or mobile web browser, not the app.

[Navitor]

Update:

After i post this post, i try to contact customer support again but the system says it cannot connect. I wait for an hour to try again, this time a new customer greeted me and said I needed to give my personal information like name, date of birth, address, and email. After she received that information, she said I would need to reset my password in order to make a payment (?!)

I do as requested because it make more sense than giving CVV out for checkout, but the same result, still cannot check out. I tried Visa card, Amex card and PayPal, all has same error "account verification required."

I then asked this customer support if she could somehow make a payment on my behalf on her side, but she said they are not allowed to do so => leading to big big red flag question: then what if i blindly gave my cvv for the first customer support??

Then the customer support said she will escalate this case for further investigation and told me to wait, should expect to receive a response email after 1-3 days.