Please do not assume that everybody who bounces a check is a crook. Please take my recent experience with TeleCheck. I wrote a check for $15.95 to a state agency. I have a duplicate of the check to prove this. The depositing bank, however, keyed it in at $2,715.95. They put this code across the bottom of my check which is how my bank reads to totals (this is standard banking procedure).
Not knowing that my sixteen dollar check was going to go through for almost three thousand dollars, I did not have the money in my account to cover this. About a week after this happened, after I was working with my bank to find out what had happened, I received a call from TeleCheck (aka TRS Recovery Systems). Bright and early on that Sunday morning, I was informed by the customer service agent that they were going to withdraw $50.95 directly from my account and gave me the "check number" that it would be showing up on my account under.
I asked her what the detail on that would be and she explained that it was: $15.95 for the original check plus $20 bounced check fee plus a $14.95 administrative fee. Since she told me that this was how it was going to be, I had no idea that I had other options. Okay, on the surface that sounded like no problem. I am going to be reimbursed for all these fees anyway. However, when I received the "invoice" a week later it mentioned that I could pay by check or have the money immediately debited from my account for an extra fee. The "administrative fee" that the collection agent mentioned was not manditory although she made it sound like it was. Upon calling and talking to a customer service agent and her supervisor (who were both extremely rude and hostile to me), I came to the conclusion that they were perpetuating consumer fraud.
Sorry for taking so much of your time, but what I am trying to accomplish here is two things. First I want to make it clear that every check that bounces is NOT necessarily the fault of the check writer. Second, PLEASE move your check recovery business to a company that does not engage in fraudulant activity. You may feel that anybody who writes a bad check gets what they deserve, but like I said, it is not always our fault. Please consider leaving TeleCheck immediately and telling all of your business contacts to do the same!
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