Today was my first experience with Telecheck. Telecheck is a company working behind the scenes, gauranteeing checks or any bank transaction for the merchants who accept checks or online bank payments. They do not have access to individual account information and rarely contact consumers regarding the records they keep on file about consumers.
Today I tried to purchase Xmas presents through Amazon, a company with whom I am a loyal consumer as well as established merchant. I have been working with the company for years. Usually, I use my credit cards to purchase items, but as the economy has taken a turn for the worse, I have shunned using my credit cards and am using only cash I have on hand. So I tried to purchase some items with my checking account. Less than an hour later, I was sent an email stating that my online bank transaction had been rejected, when I knew had quite a bit of money in my checking account.
After contacting my bank and Amazon to find out what in the world was going on, I was informed that Telecheck rejected my transaction and I would have to contact them. So I did. The CSR I talked to informed that "Telecheck has no negative information on you. Your transaction may not have gone through for several reasons. Unfortunately any merchant in the country that you try to use your checking account with will be declined. You can try again in a few days if you would like and see if anything has changed." She would not elaborate.
What? Are you serious? I have just been black-balled by every Telecheck client in the country for absolutely no reason I can think of and no reason the CSR at Telecheck could find.
In my opinion, this company should be investigated. If they have no negative information and are not a credit bureau, then they are taking money from merchants and preventing me (and others I am sure) to stimulate the economy for no other reason than they feel like it. How is this even legal?
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