Twice in the last few months, I have had unpleasant encounters with a company called Certegy. What is it, you ask? Although it presents itself as a check-approval company that provides services to protect client businesses from the awful ravages of bad check-writers, what it appears to be in truth is an outfit that has set itself up as an arbiter of personal spending habits, when, where, and how consumers will be allowed to spend their own money if they choose to pay by check. Have an excellent credit record, more than enough money in the bank, no history of writing bad checks? That’s okay, Certegy will give you one and take away your feelings of lifelong fiscal responsibility by declining your checks, simply because you don’t fit their “safe check-writing” standards. What are these standards, you wonder? Don’t ask Certegy after you’ve been declined; in my experience, they won’t tell you. What they WILL tell you is that you can avoid the inconvenience and embarrassment and potential trouble of having checks declined by them in the future if you’ll just sign up for their “free pre-approved check writer program.”

Methinks something smells rotten, and it’s not my credit record, or anyone else’s.

To begin with, Certegy is affiliated with stores such as Best Buy -- a chain which recently declared (according to the Wall Street Journal) that it wants to get rid of twenty percent of its customers, specifically the ones who come to their stores to purchase items on sale and don’t stay to buy more expensive (and more profitable) non-sale items (which is a joke, since these days, many of Best Buy’s “sales” are now in the form of rebates, which means you get to pay full price up front while they play with your money for anywhere from four to twelve weeks, depending on the size of the rebate, provided you send in all the requisite materials on time, which they're betting a fair number of people won't). When I confronted Certegy after my first run-in with them – where I was repeatedly told that I had done nothing wrong, per se, that my credit and check-writing record was fine, I was told that the information concerning the transaction that had been declined had mysteriously disappeared from their computers, supposedly along with other personal information about me and my bank accounts. Yet before I was declined the second time -- again for reasons that had nothing to do with credit or check-writing history -– I was asked if the purchase was personal or for business. The first incident HAD involved a professional purchase (made via my personal account), at a completely different store -– but why would Certegy ask this, or even KNOW that I made business purchases if they weren’t keeping information about me? Moreover, why should it have made any difference whatsoever? Whether or not my purchase was for personal or professional use is not their business -– I shouldn’t have even been asked the question, but Certegy apparently used my answer as their excuse to decline my check (which, incidentally, the clerk at Best Buy had intended to keep and destroy -- and no, I did not trust that he would do so and demanded return of the check).

Now, I understand that businesses who accept checks want some sort of reasonable guarantee that they are not going to be given ones made of rubber. But the key word here is "reasonable," and in my opinion, Certegy's methods are going much too far. Their tactics are, I believe, an attempt by Certegy and the companies who engage their services to control how and when and where people can spend their own money, based not on the question of whether or not the customer has sufficient funds nor on their past behavior as a writer of checks, but on whether or not they can get your name and personal information on their list, with your consent. Though I asked repeatedly, I was given absolutely no explanation of what their check-writing “standards” entailed nor how I had presumably violated them, not by the persons at the stores who hire Certegy (stores, I might add, who are absolutely unwilling to take any personal responsibility when an honest customer is denied a purchase; the goodwill and continued business of the customers does not seem to be a matter of concern to them, only that Certegy give them the stamp of approval), nor by the employees of Certegy itself. When I sent a complaint to Certegy following the first incident, the company didn’t even have the decency to offer any kind of a reply. If they can’t get you to sign up for their pre-approved list, it would seem they have no use for you. And yet, they used that complaint against me by noting from my correspondence that I had been denied the use of my checking account to make a professional purchase, information that I feel they have no business retaining only to use in what appears to me to be a campaign of harassment designed to get me onto their list. They apparently want me there, so that they can guarantee their client businesses that I will come to their stores and continue to make large purchases, but only if I'm willing to accept their demand that I willingly be placed on that "pre-approved" list. Plainly, their pre-approval is not for YOUR protection, the consumer's; it's for the benefit of the businesses who want you to give them more and more of your money without returning common courtesy, much less respect, to you for choosing to be their customer.

Why is this List so important to them? Well, for one, it gives them power over you. When they decline your check, they collect a good deal of information about you: your checking account number, the name of your bank, your name, your address, driver’s license number, your birthdate, even the routing numbers on your checks -- and they keep this information (and anything else they can get on you) in their computers (although they might tell you it “disappeared” if you ask about it) where the potential for it to be stolen and/or misused can be considerable (after all, if Certegy displays so little trust in innocent people who have done nothing wrong, why should I, a person who has been abused by them, consider them trustworthy? They’ve done nothing to earn it). And if you DO sign up for their “free” pre-approved check-writers program... Now, in these avaricious times, do we believe for one moment that they’re doing this out of the goodness of their hearts as a public service that is getting them, and the companies who use their services, nothing? Would stores like Best Buy -- who are willing to lose twenty percent of their customers simply because they only shop sales and aren’t as profitable as they’d like -- hire a company to vett customers’ checks if there wasn’t something more in it for them?

So what IS in it for them? Well, I have no hard and fast proof of this, but I have one powerful suspicion: These stores want to get you to sign on with Certegy so that you will become a “client” of Certegy, and therefore by affiliation THEIR client –- which, if you happen to be on the federal no-call list, now makes you fair game for the marketing and solicitation calls you’ve been trying to avoid. Many of the stores that post Certegy as their check-clearing service offer credit cards, and several were among the most annoying pests we had to keep hanging up on when they called to harass us again and again, trying to suck us into their credit Hell -- something I personally consider criminal, given this country's massive credit card debt, which is in part driven by the credit card companies, whose policies are truly nothing less than usury. When a large percentage of their income is derived not from interest on outstanding balances but on huge late fees, over-the-limit fees, and trumped up interest rates lowered on customers who might do as little as be late a month or two with their payment, it's difficult to think of the lender an the injured party asking reasonable recompense for what can start as a minor infraction on the part of a customer.

And if you don’t think is part of their goal, I’d like to tell you a story of something that happened shortly after the no-call list went into effect. One of the major soft-drink companies sent out millions of coupons for “free” bottles of their product; you just had to fill in your name and phone number to get this “freebie” (and get included in a sweepstakes as well, if I recall correctly). In the fine print on the coupon was a statement that if you accepted this offer, you also agreed to become their client and thus agreed to accept solicitation calls from them and their affiliate companies. They WANTED people off that no-call list, only because they wanted to be able to resume pressuring them to buy their goods or sign up for their services. There's no other reason for them to want such a thing, and they knew that people would not agree to it if they were open and honest, so they resorted to handing out "free" merchandise with a hidden hook. I believe that if the police do it, it's called entrapment, but when big business does it.... Well, it's not their fault, they printed the terms right there in print so small they knew most people would not read it.

That particular tale came to a sad end for the soft drink company when people were tipped off to their trickery. But now, we have a large agency that collects information about credit and spending habits that is using its power to decline checks for no reasons that they appear willing to state plainly. This is something they must know will worry those honest people who are declined -– will this show up as a black mark on my credit record? –- and thus will provide leverage to coerce them into signing onto their list, with no up front guarantee that the information you give them will not be sold to other companies, or used by the companies they represent as an excuse for nuisance marketing or other more harmful purposes.

You might wonder why I think this is a motive for Certegy’s activities. The answer: the first time I had a run-in with them, I sent emails to the various parties involved, registering a complaint. The company who had hired Certegy in that case -– CompUSA -– informed me, right on their parent website, that if I wanted any response from them via email, I had to turn off my spam blockers. No other company with which I have even the loosest Internet dealings has made that request, and some of them are businesses much larger than CompUSA. The obvious conclusion is that CompUSA is a known spammer, and has been noted as such in spam-blocking software. Seeing that did not fill me with feelings of confidence that either they, or Certegy, had my best interests at heart in wanting me to get onto that pre-approved list. Hearing later that a long-time employee of another store that had recently signed on with Certegy had had his personal check for a purchase at his own store declined simply because he hadn’t signed up for that list pretty well cemented my feeling that these business practices, while technically (if perhaps debatably) legal, are not at all aimed at serving the very public who must make the purchases that keep these companies alive.

And what to me is the worst thing about this outfit: Certegy is now the check-approval company for Walgreens, a major nationwide pharmacy. What happens when someone who needs their prescriptions filled has no credit card, not enough cash on hand, and Certegy declines their check because they haven’t signed on for their pre-approval program? If they need their medicine NOW, what responsibility will Certegy bear if that person literally suffers or gets sick because they made the choice to deny them that purchase where and when they needed it, even though they had no decent reason to decline it? Do they have double-standards when it comes to your purchases, we'll approve your check if you need medicine because we don't want to be liable or appear heartless, but we won't if you need a new hard-drive for your computer that just suffered meltdown, unless you're using the computer for a business, in which case we might cut you some slack? What gives them the right to make such decisions concerning how, when, and where you spend your money? Simply the fact that you wanted to use a check instead of a credit card?

The U.S. has a free-enterprise economy, but it would appear that it is becoming free only for the businesses and not for the consumers. We pay them twice over, not only with our money, but also with private information about ourselves which they can and do use to harass us. In order to make purchases, customers may find themselves at the mercy of companies who view them only as statistics in their profit margins and growth potential, not as human beings who worked hard for their money and have the right to spend it as and when they see fit. The matter of a check’s worth is between the individual and their bank, the only institution that I feel should be consulted if the reliability of the customer is in question. Keeping a list of known offenders is one thing; making innocent consumers feel like they have become offenders because of some third party's hidden agenda is something else -- an intolerable "something else," in my opinion. If the store can’t be bothered to treat its check-writing customers like other customers, then they shouldn’t be accepting checks at all. Check writers should not be singled out as prey, nor treated as if they are guilty until proved innocent.

And as far as I’m concerned, any store that doesn’t have the backbone to make decisions about its customers without relying on a third party information collector to “pre-approve” them doesn’t deserve my business, or anyone else’s. They should take the risks themselves, just as the customers take the risk that what they are buying will be worth the money they paid for it. The businesses should not be given more rights and protections than the consumers who are the foundations of their business, without whom they could not exist.

The moral of the story: If you go shopping and you write checks, look for that “Certegy” sign on the doors or at the cash registers (or ask, some stores don’t bother to display it at all). If you see the Certegy name, put your checkbook and credit cards away, and if you must make the purchase, pay in cash. Give them as little information about you as possible. Because you never know when and where it might show up and hurt you.