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On september 9, 2006 I went to home depot at spokane valley, wa. I had regularly been spending $500- 700 week on a remodeling project. This particular day my check was declined by home depot and the certegy group. Why? I have no idea. I immediately went to my bank and withdrew the funds necessary to purchase my products and then went to customer service. I explained the situation and the girl said there was basically nothing I could do - in essence tough petunia. I then asked to speak to a manager and waited 15 minutes - then 3 show up. First I was told that there was nothing they could do - a corporate decision they can not over ride. Then they called certegy group to “show me” how easy it was to get a hold of them. It isn’t they have a voice response system that assures me my check is good and the retailer will be notified. As I tried to explain to them, I look like an idiot waiting in line having my check decline. They offered that perhaps I had not written a check quite so big at home depot before - I showed them where I had written checks twice as big and had no problems. Then the two women explained how they had checks decline too - I don’t care - I just want my check to be accepted. Then with persistence assistant manager terry stroud assured me he would call and find out what could about certegy group and how they work. He never called. Then on september 12, 2006 I called the home depot and left a message for terry stroud, who, to date has still not returned my call. I sent an email to home depot and no response, I filled out on-line opinions and no response, get the picture? I then tried to get a hold of certegy group, you know the company with an ivr? Well it seems that you can not ever actually talk to a person. You can only send them your bank account info, your driver’s license, your social, all the things that identity thieves want. No one will answer how and where this information is stored, who has access to it, how certegy determines if an account is valid. They continue to tell me that they can not talk to me without that information. I keep asking why they need my account information to answer basic questions. Bottom line - I am returning the $700 worth of product I purchased at home depot that I did not use. Usually I would keep it for the next project, but not this time. I will go right across the street and shop at lowe’s.
I believe Lowe's subscribes to Certegy also. I feel your pain as my checks have been rejected twice in seven days. This whole thing is just outrageous! I've written checks to Home Depot twice before the rejection in the last month - one for over $8K and the other for over $5K. Last Sunday I purchased five carts of building materials that came to around $2,900. My check was refused and since I had to have the supplies, I used my credit card. Today I went to the service desk first and had them call Certegy to see if my check would be approved and was told it would not. The reason? Because I don't have any check writing history with Certegy. What about the first two checks over $13K? Which BTW have already been processed and come back in my bank statement. You wouldn't believe the merchants who subscribe to Certegy. Walgreens for one. What happens to the person who needs a percription filled after coming from the ER at 2a.m. and whose check is refused? Or the elderly person who needs their meds to live?
My check was declined this past weeked for $140 at Best Buy. I had been shopping all day and had not even an hour before written a check that was cleared with no problems. The clerk was told that there was no negative marks but not to accept my check. Knowing I had not bounced any checks I called Certegy while I was at the cash register to find out according to the "service" rep that they could refuse your checks "just because". As he told me even though your VIP status with no negative marks whatso ever we can deny your check just because its "only an IOU." I was not only embarrased but now I am furious at how they can play with consumers at their will. This is discriminatory credit which is illegal and I filled complaints with both the BBB and the Federal Trade Commission. I am on a mission now as no one should ever be embarrased or belittled for Certegys "ego".
Will not be doing business again with Home Depot, Had wwore never to do business with them a couple of years ago, but thought we would try again since they were convenient. Saturday was mortified when Certegy (Home Depots's Check service) refused a check for a little over $200. Had spent over a a lot of money the week before for a small remodel job and needed some more parts. Certegy didn't ask for a drivers liscense that for the large check and the check had cleared Friday. Then Saturday was in the check out line and even after presenting a drivers liscence, the small check was refused. Never had an issue with bounced checks. Apparently Home Depot and Certegy policies are totally inconsisent policies. Lowe's is the same distance, so will be using them from now on.
You think writing checks to them is a hassle, you should try doing service repair work for them. I did back in December and I am still trying to get paid.
Home Depot Store 1277 is bad when it comes to management. Walked in there the other day and saw associates working their ### off like it was slave labor. Does management know how to treat the associates? their not slaves, their people too. Store Manager Joe is a Jack ###. His store was looking bad for a several months, bY this time Ive been in the store for every week. Associates told Joe store looks like crap and his reply was" Don't worry about it". Finally Regional manager says his store looks like ###, fallowed by district manager saying the same thing. All of a sudden joe is mad. He wants to start firing employees for this. I personally think JOE THE STORE MANAGER OF STORE NUMBER 1277 Should be fire for is lack of management, his lack of leadership. If you don't believe me go take a look for your self!
I propose a call to arms on this! You can make this go away! Here's how:
So, this just happened to me with almost 2 hours-worth of shopping in my $700 basket. This included a lot of custom paint as well. I ended up standing in line for like 30 minutes trying to get someone to override or a human contact at Certegy. Of course, nothing happened and in the end, we just left them with our purchases and went out to eat.
It occurred to me later that my visit probably cost Home Depot quite a bit of money. No, I don't mean the money that I -would- have spent there but wasn't able to because they wouldn't take my check, that's lost of course, but they never had that. What I'm talking about the real cost that the entire episode caused them. Things like their overall customer experience (I had a register line tied up for 30 minutes trying to call Certegy and eventually someone had to come up from the back to open a register to handle the large backlog of waiting people), the employee -time- it cost them (I had like 2 supervisors and the register employee tied up for at least 30 mins, plus the guy that had to open a new register, -plus- the time it took employees to return all my -wide- variety of items to the shelves later), plus some of the materials themselves were actually custom, one-off things (custom cut lumber, mixed up paint colors, etc.) that they had to hope to sell to someone else at a discount or just eat the cost of.
My plan is this: do this every freaking day from here until they take my check. Every few days, I'm going to go back and attempt to buy the exact same things (and more, -every freaking thing- on my building materials list this time) with this check. It will only take me a few minutes each afternoon to assemble all my custom supplies (including all my custom colors for my entire house, custom lumber for my projects, etc.), then leisurely stroll up the register with my $500 in custom paint and multiple baskets of odds-n-ends. Then, I'll back up a line, call in some managers, and let them eat that cost every single day I go in. After a couple weeks, I should be costing them tens of thousands of dollars. What can they do? Kick me out of the store for attempting to buy something with a -perfectly valid check-?
Here's where you come in.
I encourage every one reading this to do the same. If you found this site like I did (from just trying to buy something and getting 'Certegy denied' for no reason), I encourage you to run right back there in a couple of days and do it all over again (and again and again and again). I might not be able to make a difference nationally (though I plan on putting the hammer down on my local store), but if all of us just did it a few times, Home Depot would quickly have to start rethinking it's policies on using Certegy. It wouldn't take long before they'll have to start explaining to stock holders why they are loosing so much money.
It costs nothing to contribute! Do this same thing any place where Certegy denies you a purchase with no good reason.
Why don't you guys just not use checks! It is the 21st century here people. I am a cashier at Home Depot and we do not know why your checks get declined..you think we chose to not accept your checks? No! We want you out of our store happy just like you do. Don't get mad at Home Depot for not accepting your check..it isn't THD.
Identity theft is a reason not to use a credit card. I had to cancel my credit card because of this and either use personal checks for large items or cash for not so large $ items. Never got another credit card since then. Modern times? Find a way to get ahead of the identity thieves and maybe people will feel safe again using plastic credit. No fun having to pay attorneys' fees and go to court for someone charging thousands on your credit card when you'return home recovering from cancer.
You complain like a girl. Big f''in deal if your check didn't go through. You got your money and bought the product right. Spending all your time writing stupid blogs, and tryin to get in touch with different company. Wasting your time. Just let it go you little ### lol. Use cash next time, and don't get mad at Home Depot people. I've had checks denied before then went to my bank to get the money, is no big deal. People like you make all people look dumb. Dipshi*
Just FYI... Home Depot does not use certegy any more for this exact reason... it was never a "home depot declined my check thing" it was a certegy is a bad company and does not have customer service which is a home depot top priority..
We were equally just as frustrated as customers were when a check would decline.
I went to Home Depot Canada at Billy Bishop as I wanted to have the Price Guarantee of 10% on the GE Cafe Gas Range.There was a Promo at Lowes as they were giving 15% on the item.When I showed the print out to the employee, he called the supervisor and to my surprise, he refuses to honour it.I told him that the 10 % Price Guarantee is on the Home Depot policy but he replied that Lowes made a mistake on their website.
I went ot Canada Appliance store and they honour it without any problem
The Home Depot in San Luis Obispo turned down a check for $11, 000 for windows that wouldn't be delivered for a month. The check would have cleared in 3 days. They wouldn't call the bank to check on funds. It went to the store manager who couldn't even comprehend that they had no risk. Went To Lowes they took it right at the till first time. The Home Depot are like robots, if their check approval service denies it, all they can say is this does not compute!