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Posted by Dan Lanciani on May 19, 2008, 9:48 am
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hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
|I don't like this business of electronic check clearance; where the
|recipient doesn't send the paper check back but instead electronically
|charges you. It's too easy to do a duplicate charge as you describe.
Have you asked all the companies that you pay by check to stop making
the conversion to ACH debit? According to the last version of the NACHA
rules that leaked out, members are required to allow you to opt out of
this process. (Based on the discussion in the paper that showed up on
the web for a while NACHA was very reluctant to make this rule, but
apparently there was some threat that it might become a legal requirement
if they didn't do it voluntarily.) Now of course companies can make it
very difficult for you to talk to the right person to opt out, and it can
be tricky to discuss the NACHA rules since those rules are not available
to non-members (even though they operate more-or-less as legal regulations
governing our transactions).
Verizon in MA has a nice toll-free number to opt out of ACH conversion,
but they simply ignore the request and continue direct debiting. Similarly
their reps claim that they have taken care of it and it must be a problem
with "your bank." It took me about six months and a letter to the president's
office to get them to stop converting my mother's checks.
Of course, the real problem is that banks uniformly refuse to block ACH
debits on consumer checking accounts (and often on all types of consumer
accounts). They typically lie and cite Check21 as a reason that they cannot
decline any electronic debits to an account. (Check21 has nothing to do
with ACH debits but involves passing images of checks. You cannot
opt out of Check21, though a bank has no obligation to accept checks in
electronic form--they could demand physical substitute checks if they
wanted to.) Naturally, businesses are allowed to block ACH debits on their
accounts since having random electronic withdrawals would screw up their
accounting. Consumers are not so lucky...
Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com
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Posted by Rob Levandowski on May 22, 2008, 6:21 am
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> Have you asked all the companies that you pay by check to stop making
> the conversion to ACH debit? According to the last version of the NACHA
> rules that leaked out, members are required to allow you to opt out of
> this process. (Based on the discussion in the paper that showed up on
> the web for a while NACHA was very reluctant to make this rule, but
> apparently there was some threat that it might become a legal requirement
> if they didn't do it voluntarily.) Now of course companies can make it
> very difficult for you to talk to the right person to opt out, and it can
> be tricky to discuss the NACHA rules since those rules are not available
> to non-members (even though they operate more-or-less as legal regulations
> governing our transactions).
I work for a major international bank, albeit not in the checking part
of the house.
Opting out of ACH conversion is, frankly, silly. Trust me, the moment
that paper check hits the depositor's bank or the clearing-house, it's
going to be scanned and shredded.
I'm not debating the merits of Check 21; I'm personally not thrilled
about it myself. The banks, however, are all for it. Consider a large
bank like Bank of America. Can you imagine how much money used to be
spent just hauling cancelled checks back and forth? The trucks, the
gas, the security, the extra postage for the check drafter's
statement... all for little slips of paper that most people throw out
when they arrive in the mail.
By scanning the checks as soon as possible when they hit the banking
system and converting them to data, all that expense of moving physical
paper around vanishes. In this day and age, money *is* data. Even
before Check 21, the movement of the paper check through the ACH system
didn't control where your funds were at any given time -- it was the
movement of bits through ACH systems that moved the money from one
account to another.
Several banks have even been working with ATM vendors on creating ATMs
that will accept checks through a slot-feed mechanism, without an
envelope. The ATM would scan the check as it was inserted and convert
it to an ACH draft, and shred the check within the ATM after the
customer verifies the scanned information.
--
Rob Levandowski robl@macwhiz.com
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Posted by Robert Bonomi on May 22, 2008, 7:38 pm
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>> Have you asked all the companies that you pay by check to stop making
>> the conversion to ACH debit? According to the last version of the NACHA
>> rules that leaked out, members are required to allow you to opt out of
>> this process. (Based on the discussion in the paper that showed up on
>> the web for a while NACHA was very reluctant to make this rule, but
>> apparently there was some threat that it might become a legal requirement
>> if they didn't do it voluntarily.) Now of course companies can make it
>> very difficult for you to talk to the right person to opt out, and it can
>> be tricky to discuss the NACHA rules since those rules are not available
>> to non-members (even though they operate more-or-less as legal regulations
>> governing our transactions).
>
>I work for a major international bank, albeit not in the checking part
>of the house.
>
>Opting out of ACH conversion is, frankly, silly. Trust me, the moment
>that paper check hits the depositor's bank or the clearing-house, it's
>going to be scanned and shredded.
Tell me, *WHAT* happens when the _original_ is needed for forensic analysis
to establish/rebut a "quality" forgery or other 'alteration' of the original?
_WHO_ bears the liability for having honored the forged/altered instrument?
_HOW_ do you prosecute a criminal forgery case without the actual evidence?
Or, maybe the issue is moot, because nobody forges checks any more?
<*guffaw*>
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Posted by Rob Levandowski on May 23, 2008, 10:23 pm
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bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
> Tell me, *WHAT* happens when the _original_ is needed for forensic analysis
> to establish/rebut a "quality" forgery or other 'alteration' of the original?
Under Check 21, the scanned image *is* the original instrument for all
legal purposes. If the forensic information you desire isn't captured
by the scan, you're out of luck.
If you say "I never wrote that check," and the bank presents you with a
fax-quality monochrome printout of the check, under the law they have
presented you with as much proof as if they had presented the original
check.
I don't like this part myself, but it's the law now in the U.S., and
good luck fighting the banking lobbyists to get it changed....
You may have an easier time of it using electronic banking or payment by
credit/debit card. The chargeback rules for those procedures are
usually more liberal than those for paper checks.
--
Rob Levandowski robl@macwhiz.com
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Posted by Matt Simpson on May 23, 2008, 10:25 pm
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> Several banks have even been working with ATM vendors on creating ATMs
> that will accept checks through a slot-feed mechanism, without an
> envelope. The ATM would scan the check as it was inserted and convert
> it to an ACH draft, and shred the check within the ATM after the
> customer verifies the scanned information.
My credit union has ATMs that work this way, although I'm not sure the
check is actually shredded within the ATM. The check is accepted via
slot-feed and scanned. The scanned image is displayed on the ATM's
screen, and also printed on the customer's receipt.
The first time I used this feature, I had an interesting problem due to
the bizarre way the ATM handles PIN verification.
When the card is entered, it is read and spit back out. Then it asks
for the PIN. So there is no longer an opportunity for the ATM to eat
the card if the customer enters the wrong PIN too many times.
And apparently the PIN is not verified immediately when entered. It
waits until the first transaction.
So I fed in my card, it spit it back out and asked for my PIN. I
entered 4 digits. Then it asked what I wanted to do. I said I wanted
to deposit a check. So it activated the slot feeder, I fed in the
check, and it scanned it.
Then it told me my PIN was wrong.
Since I wasn't sure whether I had remembered the wrong number, or
fat-fingered the correct one, I screwed up 2 more times.
Then it told me I had exhausted my PIN retries and it was cancelling the
transaction.
But it didn't give back my check, which was somewhere deep within the
bowels of the machine, maybe shredded or maybe not. So there I was with
no check and no funds deposited to my account.
When I called the next day, they were able to get it straightened out.
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