Marx2k
Madison,#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Tue, June 16, 2009
"On 6-3-09 I attempted to write a check at K-Mart at your store located at 33 W State St Binghamton, NY for the amount of $115.45. It was declined by a third-party company called Certegy Check Services, Inc." However, your cashier had no problem processing my payment with my bank card, which is the same bank I tried to write my check upon." Your bank card withdraws the funds immediately from your account, whereas your check takes time to clear and funds may or may not be available in the account when that happens. This is why there is no third party acting as a guarantor between the check and the merchandiser. "K-Mart and the NYS Attorney General instead of dealing with a third party that appeared to be fishing for financial information." K-Mart uses the service as a guarantor for immediate payment on bounced checks. I seriously doubt K-Mart is going to want to stop that service since otherwise they'd either have to not accept checks anymore or use another service for the same thing. "Why would you use such an obtuse company? Is it because it is located in a poor side of town with many minorities who aren't likely to complain much and have no choice but to frequent your store?" The service is at all K-Marts, not just the ones in the poor side of town. "Since when does a third party interject itself between a customer and a merchant such as you?" Since the merchant does not feel like collecting on their own checks. "Are you aware of the number of complaints concerning this company which can be easily found online, and the security breach they recently suffered?" My guess is the merchant loses less money by using Certegy than they would if they didn't use Certegy. "On what basis did you reject my check? Because Certegy didn't approve?" Certegy makes real-time approval decisions based on variables in play for that merchant across America (# of bounced checks that period, amounts of those checks, etc etc) "After I had spoken with the rest of my family, they informed me that they will not shop at your organization, either. Some of them live in other cities in New York. I had usually spent around $1800 per year at K-Mart (which I had to go back through my records for five years to total for this letter) and it is an amount that you will never see again. I and my family will shop elsewhere. Enclosed find copies of my declined check, the receipt which was accepted after paying with my bank card which represents the last monies you will ever receive from me, and a copy of my complaint to the NYS Attorney General." You do realize that Certegy is at pretty much every merchant, right? Also, I'm not sure that the NYS Attorney General can do since the service isn't illegal. Your check is not legal tender. No one has to accept it. If you wrote a check to me, I can decline to accept it for whatever reason i want.