posted on June 8, 2001 07:45:09 AM
Hello all of you cuties,
A lady at a store a few blocks away from me took a check for an ebay auction. The buyer was in Florida, just as she is. She called to make sure the account was open that funds were available. Everything was okay.
She deposited the check. About two weeks later she goes on vacation, still no problem with the check she had shipped the item after 8 days. When she gets back from her vaction of a week she has a nasty letter from her bank telling her that her account is overdrawn and that if she does not pay in 5 days, they would report her to the State Attorney for worthless checks. The check she deposited was returned for being on a closed account.
She has the money to bring her account out of the negative. She is very angry with her bank for saying they will proscecute her for worthless checks.
I spoke to several people in the banking industry and they all said that the bank can only turn her over to a collection agency and that they can not file charges against her since she did not write the check. They also said that the bank can not go after the person that wrote the check. Only the person that accepted the check can go after that person. One of the people I spoke to said that banks are now using collection agencies the same as credit card companies. They said the collectors will say anything to get the money.
The people that I spoke to are in South Florida where check fraud is a pastime.
It is a little more (only slightly) laid back in North Florida.
Has anyone ever heard of banks in Florida using scare tactics like this to recover money from overdrawn accounts? It just seems a little rough since the lady has been in business for a long time and has had this same bank the entire time. She said that she had no problems with them until now. The check was for $750 and her account was overdrawn for $500 and some odd dollars.
posted on June 8, 2001 10:40:54 AM
A few weeks after I rented a store front, a male and a female showed up asking about the previous tenant. They claimed that they were there on behalf of a certain bank. They were pushy, rude and asked questions that I did not feel comfortable answering.
They left a business card with no address, no indication of what they did and it did not have anything to indicate a connection to a bank. All the card had was a phone number and the name of the person that gave it to me. I called the bank that they claimed to be from and the rep said that she had no idea about these people and that the bank would never come to someone's place of business.
I was disgruntled that someone would come into my store during business hours and act the way they did.
A few weeks later I find out that they were a collection agency that the bank of the previous tenant had hired to get payment on an overdrawn account.
I found out, because the person they were looking for called my store to see if anyone had been here asking questions. This person was livid. They came to his store during business hours and were very nasty to him and said some innapropriate things in front of his customers. To add insult to injury, he had paid for the overdraft long ago, but the bank had applied it to another account of his that was not overdrawn.
Last I heard from him he was contacting an attorney. They had threatened to turn him for worthless checks, which his attorney said the bank could not do.
To send a collector to a person's place of business is out of line.
If a bank did that to me I would never have any dealings with them again.
posted on June 8, 2001 05:37:36 PM
Shop4shoes - It's also against the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act - they cannot discuss your debt or reveal that they are attempting to collect a debt to a third party. I'm an attorney - an attorney in your area would love to get hold of this and nail these guys! Diane
I don't think they spoke to a third party about her. They just used some pretty heavy handed tactics.
Are they allowed to threaten to turn her over to the State's Attorney for worthless checks even if she did not write the check? I did not think they were allowed to lie about matters like that.
She is a really nice lady and a little too trusting. She is also a nervous wreck in general and this has made her worse.
I don't take checks in my stores. I want to avoid situations like this.
