Complaint Review: Certegy Check Services - Tampa Florida

My wife's account of the out-of-the-clear-blue-sky abuse at the hands of Certegy's robot algorithms is very similar to the originating complaint above, but with one notable exception.  That exception is the frequency of check-writing.  Although we write perhaps half a dozen or so checks in a month, we generally use debit cards instead. On the day my wife visited Big Lots, she purchased a whopping $126 worth of lawn tent. We've shopped (truly past tense now) Big Lots for years. The Manager recognized her as a repeat customer. She prepared a check and presented it to the clerk along with her valid and current driver license AND a military dependent's identification card. Both ID's were current and had photographs. Our FICO scores are above 780, both of us. We have never, in the FORTY YEARS our checking account at the Pentagon Federal Credit Union has been active, bounced a check or had to redeem one for insufficient funds. We've never been bankrupt or insolvent or late in making payments.  Getting the picture here? I'm a retired military officer with Sterling credit, a new high-end automobile, two rental properties, a seat on a local city council, and more.  Our credit is easily confirmed, as is our good name. On the day of this incident, our checking account balance exceeded $5,000. And yet, on this day of days, these feckless losers embarrassed my wife in front of other customers and employees. To make matters worse, my wife is a Japanese-born naturalized U.S. citizen and the loss of face in public holds a special humiliation for her. I raised as much of a stink about this with Big Lots as I could.  I never was able to speak to anyone at Certegy, except the initial call that went to some person in some foreign land with an accent so unintelligible that I simply gave up.  This Certegy company is robotic and is completely indifferent about the trouble, the inconvenience, the embarrassment, and frankly, the rage their apparently arbitrary, if not capricious, decline decisions cause unsuspecting, honest people.  I would like to see these people investigated and sued.  And, yes, if it comes to a suit, sign us up.

Certegy advertises that they decline between 2-5% of the millions of transactions attempted each year. This 2-5% is more like a quota and does not accurately depict the number of fraudulent attempts. The quotas are used on reports and brochures to clients in order to promote their service as viable and necessary. 


As less people rely on checks and check cashing services, Certegy services become less needed. It is only though their 'proprietary fraud model' that they are able to convince big named corporations like Wal-Mart to continue using their system. 


This proprietary fraud detection model is written to convince big corporations that 'something is being done to prevent fraud'. In reality, the models goal is to meet the 2-5% quota that their brochures and reports advertise. This means that even if customers are law-abiding citizens who have no intention of committing fraud, they can fall within Certegy's 'proprietary fraud detection model' algorithm. 


Certegy gets away with this because they can hide the reasons for check declines through codes. The codes limit the detail that prevent discovery of the algorithms. In essence, they can arbitrarily deny transactions based solely on the hidden algorithm and consumers have no right to know why they were declined. 


In summary, your check was declined so Certegy can continue selling their product. You become a statistic that Certegy reports to their shareholders in order to justify the costs of the services. 


This is a completely unethical way of doing business especially in the United States that has laws protecting credit and consumers. Certegy has managed to circumvent the laws. They understand fraudsters are finding other ways to steal from businesses and the fact that they sacrifice a few thousand innocent people per year, by denying legitimate transactions, is a small price for them pay. 


Please continue to report them to FTC at FTC.gov. Also, please make sure you report them to the Tampa, Florida BBB. So far, at the BBB, they have over 500 complaints with around 300 that continue to go unresolved. Eventually, they will have an F business rating that we can use to demand our favorite stores stop using their unethical authorization services. 


Feel free to copy and paste this as many places as you can. 

They are a Check Guarantee/Verification service.  Stores go to companies like this because of the amount of fraud with checks.  Since you were "outside" their parameters, and you appear to write a lot of checks.  You probably had written several other checks to stores in a short period of time that use them and they didn't want too many "hanging out there" in case(and not saying that they would) they come back bad.  Because they would then be responsible to pay the stores for those checks.  There is no law or regulation that requires a store to accept your check in the first place, so not really sure what "restitution" you want.

Now for something else you don't want to hear.  What ever your feelings on Debit Cards are, they are taking over checks as accepted method of payments.  A lot of smaller stores, and some major stores no longer even accept checks. 

The question is why are you writing checks?  If it is because you feel you can "float" funds, that will come back to cause you problems in the future.  Because stores can now process checks "electronically", which means that instead of it taking 2-3 days(or longer) a check may actually post the same night.

If you feel that checks are "safer", then you again are under a misconception.  When you use your Debit Card the only thing that ever gets printed on the receipts is a partial number and never anything like the PIN or expiration date.  This makes it pretty much impossible for people to have easy access to your information.  But with a check, you now have a piece of paper that in effect is laying around the store.  With this information including not only all of your personal information such as your address, but your signature as well.  It also includes all of the information needed to have someone wipe out your bank account.  There is probably no fewer than 3-4 people who have direct access to every check you write at that store.  All they need to do is get the information from that little piece of paper(aka the check).  Talk about "Identity Theft".