Richard Miller showed up at the 7 & 4 studios with a healthy dose of suspicion, and rightfully so. He stood in the lobby and re-opened his mail for me. That's when Richard explained, "This letter states that I am responsible for $2980 that was apparently spent at a Lowe's store in Homestead Florida on 12-12-09." And that is a problem for the Traverse City resident because in his own words, "I have never been to Homestead Florida".
But that wasn't the only problem. The letter had the right mailing address for Richard, but it didn't have his name on it. Instead it referred to the homeowner as "cashier check". The fact that on this single page letter there were at least three different addresses for the company who sent it (Certegy Payment Recovery Services) had Richard arriving at one conclusion, "I think it's a scam."
And perhaps Richard was justified. We've all heard the warning signs, and received the letters or email, and most of us just pitch them. But in this letter, it stated that if Richard didn't call to dispute the charge within 30 days, it was assumed a valid debt. Richard didn't want to make that call because "they are asking me to make a payment on this, I can do it online or I can call them at which point I am sure they are going to ask for some personnel information."
So Richard came to me, and made a simple request that we look into it. Since that's why we do the Fact Finders I started making some phone calls to get to the bottom of this. After a few days of digging, I hit the bottom with completely unexpected results.
As it turns out, and as you might expect, Richard Miller does not owe Lowe's for a bad check. But here is the twist; this letter that he received is not a scam. Confused? Alright here is the explanation I got.
I contacted Lowe's to get their side here is what they told me in a written statement
"Marc - the individual who received the letter received it in error, as a result of a clerical error made by Certegy. Lowe's does use Certegy for collection services; however, this particular letter was erroneously sent to the recipient. Certegy can explain further. Lowe's is pursuing a claim, but not with the individual who received that letter. Lowe's took this very seriously and worked quickly to ensure Certegy corrected the error."
So someone did bounce a check in Florida, but it wasn't Richard. So how did he get lumped into this mess? When I asked Certegy for a detailed explanation they told me they received a bounced check from Lowe's without an address associated with it.
"I think the best way to respond to your questions is to explain how our process works. We are a debt recovery company that provides services to many merchants including Lowes. Lowes received a returned check that was forwarded to us for collection. By law, we must send a letter to a consumer if we want to attempt to collect the debt. This letter is called a "validation notice" and provides the consumer the ability to validate the debt (agree it is theirs) or dispute the debt. In this case, when we received the returned item, it did not have an address. As is our standard operating procedure, we searched our databases and found your viewer's address associated with the routing and account number on the returned check. We populated the address in our system and sent the letter to your viewer. Based on your inquiry, we now understand that the address is not correct for this debt and have updated our system accordingly. We do not know the name or have any other information on your viewer and no notations have been made to his credit file. No further communication about this debt will be received by your viewer. We would be glad to send your viewer an apology letter if they will allow you to release their name to us. If they prefer not to, we understand and hope you will convey our sincerest apologies to your viewer.
I hope this clarifies the issue. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Ann Akins
VP of Operations Certegy Payment Recovery Services"
So it wasn't a scam targeting Richard but if we hadn't called and disputed it, he would have been on the hook for the money. He's off the hook now, and according to Certegy, this little error on their part won't have long term credit effects.
At this point, the story was pretty much wrapped up, then Richard opened his mail. Once again, another letter from Certegy. This time the name on the letter was "money order." We contacted Certegy, who apologized and explained there were actually two different checks associated with the address. They told Richard to ignore this one and assured him that the situation was in fact resolved.
Have you had any experiences with Certegy? Who do you think has outstanding customer services? Which companies have you had a nightmare experience with trying to resolve a situation? Let me know, leave a comment below.
