It’s Emanwel Turnbull, attorney at the Holland Law Firm, P.C. – I’m writing this special blog post to tell you about my encounter with a little-known consumer reporting agency: Telecheck.
If you’ve heard of Telecheck, you know it’s a service that scans and deposits checks for businesses. Some businesses that accept personal checks will scan them using telecheck’s service, and Telecheck handles depositing the check. Telecheck will even warrant that the check will clear. That warranty is where Telecheck’s consumer reporting business (and sometimes problems for you and me) come in.
I pay my son’s daycare with checks. It’s quicker to drop a check in a box in the morning than waiting around for someone to operate the card reader. Then one day, my check was rejected. The daycare was apologetic, but after trying the check lots of times, it just wouldn’t go through. A second check also didn’t work. They ran the check right in front of me. As soon as I saw the name Telecheck on the screen, I had that sinking feeling: I was about to have credit reporting problems.
Telecheck Reports: Mistakes and Inaccuracies
You see, Telecheck keeps check-writing histories on consumers. Dates, amounts, account numbers, whether the check cleared, and probably more than that in Telecheck reports. However, like the big credit reporting agencies, mistakes happen, and it can be a nightmare to fix when they do.
The screen said, “code 4” and a many-digit reference number. If you google “Telecheck code 4” (it’s common enough to auto-complete!), you’ll find this bland explanation:
Code 4 means: TeleCheck has information on file
that prevents warranty of any check from this check
writer or company at this time.
In plain language, that means that Telecheck’s check-writing history on you has something bad in it. Knowing that I’ve never bounced a check, I called Telecheck. After the usual round of talking computers, I got a Telecheck agent in a foreign call center, who claimed that Telecheck “was told” that a previous check “wouldn’t clear.” I knew that it had cleared. Telecheck put me on hold to call my bank. The agent from my bank, sounding less than happy, asked the Telecheck man, “what information did you want me to confirm?” She confirmed it, and the Telecheck man tried to wrap up the call with the problem, hopefully, solved.
But, I wasn’t satisfied: how had this happened? Who exactly had told Telecheck that an already-paid check wouldn’t clear? Was this a glitch at my bank or with Telecheck? Of course, I never got a straight answer. The Telecheck man explained that he didn’t know the answers, and the department that did “doesn’t take calls.” Or emails.
The initial Telecheck problem was fixed, but my next check didn’t clear either, this time with an error code 3.
Code 3 means: TeleCheck has no negative
information on the check writer or company. However,
the check falls outside of the established guidelines,
and TeleCheck will not guarantee this transaction at this
time.
This vaguer explanation means in plain language that Telecheck doesn’t have any record of problems with your checks, but for some reason, the company is still suspicious of your check. This concern of theirs can be just that you don’t have enough history, the check amount is thought to be too high, or some other circumstance makes the check look risky.
So, I called Telecheck again. This time, the explanation was straightforward and clear: Telecheck had misread the account number on the check and rejected it – presumably because it recognized that the account numbers didn’t match my name. These problems will happen in systems that rely on computers reading a scan of a handwritten check.
This time the problem was solved; my checks do not bounce. But, whenever I write a check, I will always wonder if Telecheck will make another “mistake” and cause me more problems.
Credit Reporting Agency Issues
Not everyone is going to have their problem solved so easily. But luckily, Telecheck is covered by the same law as the big three credit reporting agencies: The Fair Credit Reporting Act, and Telecheck reports must be accurate.
Contact us if you have problems with Telecheck (or any other credit reporting agency or specialty reporting agency). We are a team of experienced consumer rights lawyers and credit report lawyers who help people clear their names of fraudulent and inaccurate reporting.