CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Customers who start holiday shopping need to be careful when paying with a check because certain big-box stores may not take it.
Gary Conrad worked for WSOC-TV for about 35 years and is now retired. He recently shopped at PetSmart and the store wouldn't take his check.
"I was astounded because I knew I had enough money in my account," he said.
A few days later, he had the same problem at Lowe's.
"I felt that everybody who was in line behind me was thinking in their mind, just as I would have thought, 'Here's some deadbeat who is trying to bounce a check,'" he said.
The stores gave him printouts showing the check authorization company they use which is Certegy -- one of the biggest in the U.S. -- denied the checks.
The printout didn't give specific reasons why.
There are similar stories from shoppers about Certegy on the Internet.
They said they had trouble using checks at Bed Bath & Beyond, Macy's, Dillard's, Best Buy, Sears, Kmart, Game Stop, Home Depot and other popular chains.
Even the federal government went after Certegy.
The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Certegy last year, accusing the company of not doing enough to give stores accurate information.
Certegy agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle the case.
When Action 9 contacted Certegy to find out how it decides whose checks to accept or reject, the company wouldn't give details saying that would help criminals "bypass its system."
The website reads: "Due to the large number of merchants that use Certegy's services, as well as merchants' requests for confidentiality, Certegy does not provide a listing of all merchants that utilize Certegy's services. Certegy uses proprietary risk models for the decisioning process regarding the acceptance of checks. Certegy's risk models are based upon factors that closely model previous transactions that resulted in losses for our merchants. To know those factors would give anyone, including fraudulent and bad check writers, a way to bypass our system. For those reasons, even our employees are not privy to that information.
Your credit score is not a factor in our risk models or any decision provided to merchants. Decisions are made based on information in Certegy's check writer database and a statistical analysis of your check compared to all checks that have gone through our system. Depending on the specifics of your check transaction, we may attempt to verify funds with your financial institution. Our ability to contact financial institutions, though, is dependent upon the time of the transaction (i.e., during normal banking hours) as well as the financial institution's policy on disclosing account information to third parties. For privacy purposes, many financial institutions will only verify funds with other financial institutions or with the account holder."
Conrad doesn’t agree with the company’s policy.
"In my opinion, their system is wrong," Conrad said. "To subject somebody who know they have plenty of money in their account, to public embarrassment, public humiliation," Conrad said.
Certegy said it processes millions of checks each year and only denies 1.5 to 2.5 percent of them. It suggests shoppers enroll in its VIP program to avoid headaches.
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