Being Bruno

“Terrorism” is all the rage these days. Terrorism is designed to inflict fear and damage were necessary to get a desired result.  While the country throws vast resources fighting terrorism at home and abroad, something akin to terrorism is legal in these United States of America, but it is being performed by a corporation, and usually against citizens who don’t have a great amount of resources to fight back.  Here’s my story of a corporation inflicting “fear and damage to get a desired result.”

In my experience TRS Recovery Services of Houston TX, a division of TeleCheck, appears to be a great practioner of  the art of striking fear and terror into those they, by their self-created definitions, deem to be the enemy.  They are inflicting it on me. Linens N Things is also part of what appears to me to be this campaign.  There appears to be no end; it goes on and on.

TRS Recovery Services of Houston TX, is threatening me with affecting my ability to write a check at over 300,000 TeleCheck member stores, unless I pay this debt in full. Now I did not incur this debt, my names were on the check, and Linens N Things accepted these checks, without my ID, without verification that the account was valid or open or even existed. Now Linens N Things wants their money for checks they accepted from someone, not me, and they want it from me. TeleCheck the service they hire to guarantee checks are good, obviously, is coming after me and they want it done their way,, ,no other way, THEIR WAY! That is what I was told on the phone, “You will have the affidavit signed and notarized on TRS affidavit or we will continue to proceed with collection activity for this debt and limit your ability to write checks or open checking accounts” Sounds like a threat to me. Now lest you say just prove your innocence and all will stop,, they can’t be that bad!! Ah dear reader how innocent of you. I have sent them the documents at least 3 times now, that have been accepted by all other reasonable companies. The letter from the bank, the police report on the stolen checks, the affidavit for the bank’s fraud department, the FTC report number, in fact the last faxed communication with them was 15 pages of documentation But not the affidavit on their specific little form. Just do it you say, how many affidavits does their need to be? How much should I pay for their refusal to make it easy to report stolen checks. I have already spent over $1,000.00 on responding to the theft of checks, TeleCheck does not make it easy,, try finding a number to call, try talking to a human,, not easy if at all possible, and the time sink this is, is amazing.

You see, I had ordered checks and they somehow along the way got stolen. I NEVER received them. When I saw that Wall-Mart had processed two electronic checks (verified by TeleCheck) , I immediately informed the bank and put a stop on all activity,, that should stop the acceptance of checks. NOT! The next day I saw that a check had been accepted at Target in Bakersfield CA. (I live a couple hundred miles from there) and this was a paper actual check, I immediately called the bank, closed the account (again that should stop the criminals) and filed a report with my local police department. I then had to sign an affidavit with the bank that I did not authorize the use of the account and did not in any way benefit from the transactions. The bank then did their investigation and found, indeed, I did not write these checks. I then followed the advise of the Police and the Bank and my congressional office and filed a report with the FTC, and the credit reporting agencies. Then being the person I am, I then looked up check approval companies and tried to call them to let them know that this account had stolen checks and had been closed, I asked for a do not accept on these checks for the two companies I was able to get to and talk to a human. Well dear reader you will be dismayed to learn, that one told me this was not possible,,, and the other was quite nice and told me they would do so. I could not talk to a human at TeleCheck, I got a mechanical loop of pressing numbers referring me to their web site, or press # to hear instructions by voice. When going to their web site,, the fraud reporting site was not working!! I TRIED FOR 3 DAYS to get on the web site and get the information, I tried to call back and pretend I didn’t have touch tone phone, to see if I could cycle to a human,, ,no just hung up on. It appears TeleCheck is a company that believes the public exists to serve them. One time on calling (mistake never call a collection company thinking you are doing the right thing, their people are out to make life miserable for anybody that contacts them) I tried explaining that I had no access to the account as it was closed for over a month and it was not my account and that the law in California stated a police report was proof that I had filed a theft of checks, only to be told they were not in California and that in TEXAS it was not good enough! That I had to do it THEIR way.

Now let me tell you how TeleCheck does their check approval services, as I was told by one humanoid. They report on the basis of checks that they get that are refused, not based on bank information, not based on credit reporting, but on bad checks they receive, This is the good part for those that use the service and for those out there who are unsuspecting about fraud. They report on account numbers and drivers license numbers, The account number used was closed at least 12 days before Linens N Things accepted one of these checks, due to ,,,,, ready ACCOUNT CLOSED! The drivers license used if any (I don’t know as I have no access to the checks as the account is not mine,, ,it was,,, CLOSED) were not mine, they were false ID’s,, do you know what your drivers license number is being used for, or reported against? One would think that this would get the attention of TeleCheck and Linen’s N Things, but NO they continued to accept and approve these checks on at least two further occasions! One 5 days later the next a full week after the first!! Sounds like a good system to me, especially if you want to encourage fraud. One would think, that if the first check was returned account closed,, that should be a sign,, but I guess not. So Linen’s N Things accepted the first check on June 25, 2007 the account had a stop put on it on June 11, 2007 and was closed by 10:00 am Pacific Time on June 13, 2007. Subsequent checks for the amounts of just under $200.00 dollars were accepted and approved by Linen’s N Things on June 30, 2007 and July 2, 2007. Now the first I heard of these transactions was on July 12, 2007 with a collection notice that demanded payment with late fees added be mailed to an address in CA. Payments only were to be sent to this address, all other correspondence was to be mailed to an address on the back. You guessed it,,, no address on the back. So I mailed a copy of the police report, a letter from the bank, and all other info with a letter explaining that I did not own the account and that there had been stolen checks and here is the police report, the FTC report etc.. To both Linen’s N Things and an address I found for TRS Services on line, and a copy to the address for Corporate Offices of TRS in TX,, all by certified mail,, oh and the ones to Corporate in TX for TRS were returned as undeliverable. Upon return of the undeliverable mail I looked up more address and mailed via certified mail to another address and that was accepted. On July 20, 2007 I received a “nice” letter asking for more information from both TRS and TeleCheck, that they had received the information I had sent and that they needed additional information to “update your file to a forgery issue”,,, okay,,, they needed all reference numbers listed on TRS recovery service correspondence and,,AND a new forgery affidavit NOTARIZED!
On August 16 and 17, 2007 I received more “correspondence” from TRS Recover Services, Inc. Saying (now remember I had received notice saying they HAD received information and wanted further information)

“We have not received a response to ANY of our previous correspondence or efforts to reach you by phone” “This debt will not go away unless it is paid in full. In addition, your ability to use checks at over 300,000 TeleCheck member stores may be affected.” “The decision is yours, PAY THE BILL or you leave us no choice except to proceed with further collection activity.”

Now I don’t know if they tried to contact me by phone or not, my phone number is/was not on the checks, I did however send them a number to contact me on the correspondence I sent them with all the other info, big mistake, I see now) but they did receive previous responses from me,, they said so on July 20!!

It goes on, but basically they want the money they threw away by not being responsible and not taking timely action to avoid the acceptance of checks that had been stolen.

No more than 2 checks got through before my putting a stop on the account and reporting the fraudulent activity to my bank, no more than 3 transactions got through ( a visual copy of the check helped to determine that it was a check and not a fluke in electronic accounting) before my closing the account, filing a report with the police and the FTC, calling credit companies and trying to report to check approval companies. I feel I did my part as rapidly as could be expected to stop the fraud, I filed an affidavit with the bank, swore to an officer of the law, providing what evidence I could, did research and attempted to go beyond what should be accepted. TeleCheck says this is not enough, to TeleCheck I am a criminal, a thief, and I am to be punished for having the gall to be a victim of a crime. I am to spend more of my money to prove my innocence, I am to spend more of my time to prove to them, beyond what is deemed sufficient to others, that I am not responsible for their failure to protect their client from accepting bad checks. TeleCheck wants their money for not doing their job!

Here is my failure, I responded in good faith, I called them, I am grateful however that I did not leave messages as requested so they could call me back (you never speak to a human if you are trying to do more than make payment) I responded to their collection notices, I sent them what I thought would have been helpful to stop a crime from being committed. I should have just said, the account isn’t mine, the ID isn’t mine, and it seems to me that TeleCheck is less interested in stopping the passing of bad checks and in stopping fraud than they are in badgering innocent people to make good an error they allowed through their lax systems.