1537 Check What?!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

I'm so glad the local elections are over. I was getting five to eight phone calls a day for the past three weeks, with either taped candidate messages or people demanding that I tell them who I intend to vote for. When I talked to friends, they reported only two or three calls a day. About all I can figure is that I'm registered Independent, so both parties considered me a wild card.

I went to the bank to deposit some checks today, then went shopping for sewing supplies, cat food, and one of those little USB "thumb drive" thingies. Figured I'd try one, see if it might work to hold photographs and stuff.

I bought the USB thingy in Staples, and wrote a check, for less than $80. The checkout child gave her cash register a funny look, and called a manager. The manager looked at the register, and told the child to "make the call". She called someone, gave them all the info off my check, and then turned to me and said "Your check has been refused."

Huh?

She couldn't tell me exactly why, but then said, in front of all the other people lined up behind me, "It's usually because of too many bounced checks." I grabbed the manager who was about to leave, and said "Explain this, please. I've never bounced a check in my entire adult life, and besides, if I do, my bank will automatically go into my savings, and then into a signature line of credit, so it's next to impossible for a check to bounce anyway! This is ridiculous!"

He said they use a credit service to vet checks, and that the service will not tell them the reason, because of privacy issues. But I can call them and find out. He gave me a card with the phone number, and on the back of the card it gives three possible reasons:
1.) Bad history,
2.) They don't have enough information on this person to make a decision,
3.) The id offered was not verifiable.

The child never asked me for id. Whatcha wanna bet the check was refused because she didn't put in the driver's license number. Every time I wrote a check in Staples in the past, they asked for the license.

I'll call the credit service tomorrow and find out.
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