FISGlobal.com / Certegy review: certegy is a fraud 4

It's not about how much money you have in the bank or who you think you are. It's about risk. The retailers only accept checks that are a good risk. Checks are not a guaranteed form of payment and it takes several days to find out if a check is good. Therefore, not all checks are accepted. Certegy will not tell you what is wrong with a check so criminals will not be able to work their way to getting a stolen check accepted. If a crook is trying to pass a stolen check for $400 and Certegy tells them you do not usually write checks for over $200, the crooks will write 2 checks for $200. It's better to just decline the check rather than give the crooks instructions for stealing your money. That's why debit cards have been created. They instantly tell you if a transaction is good and allow you to access the money in your checking account. Stop carrying your checkbook around and making yourself vulnerable to check fraud and identity theft.

I agree - Certegy sucks.

It looks at spending patterns and decides what's unusual. Three times I tried to buy groceries from a store and because the amounts were different (you know, because I don't buy the same thing every week), they declined the check because it wasn't "in my usual spending pattern." They are basically a quick action collection agency.

Most banks already have a form of theft protection. Certegy, in my opinion, violates privacy rules and has unethical business practices.

Certegy is definitely a headache I want no part of. I needed to cash my paycheck after my credit union's hours, so I went to Wal-Mart. It was declined because it fit a profile they didn't care for, and now my car is sitting on the side of the highway with no gas in it. [censored]bags.

@William Sulivan: Keep in mind, there's as much CREDIT/DEBIT card fraud as there's stuff of the check variety. You're no more protected there (actually less- there's often less security involved with it than the checks. If they get your pin for any reason, you're in for a LOT of pain as they'll count it as if you, yourself had made the purchases. Don't fool yourself- security isn't in a scheme, methodology, or technology. It's in the conduct of the people using all of the above and without the users using good judgment and due diligence it's no better for them in the other space. It's only serving retailers to reduce THEIR risk with you eating all of that selfsame risk. Same thing with Certegy and the stores that use them.

They claimed that I wrote bad checks (Code 1...) on an account that has only seen one returned check that was redeemed that to my professional horse trainer (who is still my trainer...hint there?)- and that was due to a bank error that has been corrected by Chase. Past that, there's nothing on my account (which was established nearly 6 years ago as a business account when I was contract consulting...) and nothing against my drivers license in that same timeframe. Now, my EX, on the other hand, owes quite a bit of money to BofA, the State of Texas, and others for all the hot checks she wrote against our old joint account- but that was all mostly 7 years plus in the past (There's a reason she's my EX...that's part of it...sort of the straw that broke the camel's back.). So there's nothing that they really can use to have given me the code they gave me last night. And, if they're doing cross-correlation to the old accounts, they need to QUIT because they're dead, long since so- and I'm not liable for the damn things as I wasn't the one who wrote the checks in the first place. Do you want to know the kicker of it all? The same place accepted a check from me for a similar hunting cam all of two months prior. Certegy's a fraud and the consumers as a whole probably ought to rise up and challenge the whole lot. Since you claim it's a promissory note (which it is...) that translates into Credit Reporting. I don't think anyone's challenged them on FCRA grounds- but I think we all might just want to do it.