TeleTrack and Check 21

Have you been caught by Check 21? You might not yet, but you probably will have a tangle with it soon.

It is very frustrating to have your checks clearing (cashing), as fast as you write them. Your entire routine of being able to write a check, knowing that it wouldn’t clear (or be cashed) for a few days is a thing of the past. Boy, has Check 21 ruined your life.

No need to worry. Many others, just like you are in the same situation with Check 21. Here are some choices:

You can get another credit card to charge the things you need until your cash is in your account. This credit card can help float you through this tough time. Click here if you are interested in getting another credit card.

You could get a quick payday loan. A payday loan will get you money fast. You will have the cash you need to pay the bills today. Then when your real paycheck gets to your account you will already have things under control.

If you have gotten in trouble with Check 21, you have some options. You probably need just a little bit of cash to get you through a very tight spot.

What is Check 21?

Check 21 (or Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act) is a federal law. This law went into effect on October 28, 2004. The law was developed to help increase the efficiency of the United States check clearing system. It allows banks to replace an original check with a “substitute check”. Banks are now allowed to accept these “substitute checks” as if they were the original check. In simple terms, your checks will be cleared (cashed) much sooner than they have in the past. In many cases, the very day you write the check.

Electronic Fund Transfers

Electronic Fund Transfers:

The only way to go!

But quick and easy access to your checking account for immediate purchases is only one of the many conveniences offered by using this form of banking. In most cases you can get access your funds at a broad range of locations- and you may find that you can even have access to your accounts 24/7 in many other countries! You can often have regular occurring check amounts deposited directly into your banking accounts and can often times pay your bills the same way.

There are also pay-by phone systems that let you connect with menu choices that lets you pay certain bills or to transfer funds between accounts. You can also use your home computer to conduct your financial affairs. Even people who don’t like computers can benefit from the phone funds transfer system because everyone knows how to use the telephone. The telephone is also perhaps the most common and accessible communications tool in the world today. Even if you find yourself homebound and laid up for a while this funds transfer method can keep you on top of your finances.

But be careful in your telephone transactions you tell your bank account information to. Don’t give this information to sellers with whom you have no prior experience or who you didn’t call first. And I would be particularly suspicious of sellers who are not willing to answer legitimate questions about their practices and procedures.

Personal Computer Banking (PCB) lets you use your computer to view your account balance, request transfers between accounts, and pay bills. This takes care of having to go out to a numerous places for all sorts of different reasons, allowing you to organize your affairs and your time by letting you do everything at once. And there’s no need to design an involved trip schedule like you would if you were going on a vacation; or to fight with crowds or with the weather, because everything takes place at the time and place you find most convenient.

You can even cash checks electrically! Electronic Check Conversion turns a paper check into an electronic payment. The merchant accepts you check at the point of sale and then presents the check to your bank electronically to be deposited to their account. Then you get a receipt of the electronic transaction for your records. But perhaps the most popular use of EFT’s is Point-of-Sale (POS) transfers that lets you make purchases with your debit or ATM card. A lot of times you don’t want to carry a lot of cash around with you. This is just good sense, especially with the way things are today. But we still need to make purchases like food, clothes and other things. So how is this going to happen without cash or check? Debit/Credit/ATM cards, that’s how. The cards are easy and fun to use and they do away with a lot of the fear and anxiety that always pesters those who are stuck carrying a lot of cash around with them. Now you see why so many people are in love with their local automated teller machine (ATM). It is the ultimate banking friend that will work to see you through to the end. This can often mea 24-hour access to cash and almost instant deposit of paychecks directly into your checking or savings accounts. And the types of transactions that electronic banking can be used to do are increasing by leaps and by bounds every day. Think about it for a moment and you can see the wisdom in this system. It is like finding out the temperature, horoscope, sports score or lottery result. You can either wait until the newspaper arrives in the morning to tell you these things or you can simply call a friend, or better yet go online, and just find out the answer. EFT lets you get to the answers to your financial questions quickly and efficiently so that you can get on to life’s other things that may require a little more of your attention. Now it is understandable that you do want to make sure that a lot of care is shown with the privacy and accuracy of your account information, and banking institutions have put a series of sophisticated systems safeguards in effect just to protect your information. Security solutions like cards and codes and other devices to replace the paper and make sure that you, and nobody else, can access your accounts. The most common way that this is done is through access codes and we are all familiar with the Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) pads that almost every retailer and financial institution has for our convenience. There are also other forms of debit cards that have you sign a signature pad or ask you to scan your identification code.

Electronic Banking

You’re out of cash and out of time, because it is 9:45pm and the bank is closed. But this doesn’t have to mean that you’re out of luck. The backbone of today’s economic structure is technology. And, from the days of the very first computer right up to the present time, the great promise that every small change in technology offers only helps strengthen and improve our great way of life.

For banking consumers this translates into electronic banking. You get access to your cash at any time and on any day. Automated banking means that a machine does all the work. There doesn’t have to be a teller present; and if there isn’t a teller than that means there aren’t any pesky labor laws with all these rules that while get in between you and the cash that you crave so dearly. Machines don’t get holidays and you don’t have to care about how many hours in a row they have to work, day or night!

The way it works is that your funds are transferred by communication between two or more computers. Electronic banking, also known as electronic fund transfer (EFT), uses hard-working and tireless technology in order to get around having to rely on paper records in order to do the banking. The electronic account information transfer system just lets things happen more quickly by getting the information from place-to-place sooner than if you wait for the paper items to have to arrive.

Some General Guidelines

Some things you should know:

To understand your legal rights and responsibilities regarding your EFT account, read the documents you receive from the financial institution issuing your card. When they send you your personal identification number (PIN) keep that a secret from everyone except your most trusted confidants. No one should know your PIN except you and select employees of the financial institution.

Also, before getting any EFT service make sure that you know how much protection you have against unauthorized transfers, the contact information for anyone who you have to report unauthorized activity to, fees and costs for the transfers you are allowed to make, how to stop payment if you need to, the steps you should take if you find something wrong on your statement or activity report, the duty the bank owes you if they don’t stop a transaction as you instructed and when the bank will give your confidential information to other third parties without your prior consent.

Finally, retain your EFT receipts so that you can compare them with your periodic statements. You do this for your checking account anyway, so the procedure should be entirely familiar. By doing this you will be able to best protect yourself by discovering fraud and thereby limiting losses but you should also be able to use this information to help you make your best case in the event of a dispute.

Federal Rules

The Law of EFT Land

The federal Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFT Act) is one of the laws that covers electronic consumer transactions at the federal level. Its goal is the fair and responsible management of the electronic commerce. There are two major areas of concern for the consumer that the law applies to, incorrect information and lost or stolen cards.

Reporting Errors:

You have 60 days to notify your financial institution if there was a problem with your statement. The best way to protect yourself if an error occurs is to notify the financial institution by certified letter, return receipt requested, so you can prove that the institution received your letter. Keep a copy of the letter for your records. Make sure that you do this because if you fail to notify the institution of the error within 60 days the federal law releases the institution of any duty to investigate the matter for you.

As long as you tell the bank about the error it must begin to look into your statement in 10 days. Then the bank normally has 3 days after it is done to tell you what they found out. If the institution needs more time it may take up to 45 days to complete the investigation – but only if the money in dispute is returned to your account and you’re notified promptly of the credit. Then when their done the bank must either give you the money or, if they say there is no error and decide to keep your cash, they must tell you in writing why they’re keeping your money.

Commercial credit card issuers have 10 business days after you tell them about the error, or it can petition for up to 90 days, to complete an investigation. If no error is found at the end of the investigation, the institution must either give you back the money or give you a written explanation.

Also keep in mind that some card issuers have their own warranty and purchaser protection periods. Never forget to bend their ear because they are often quicker and more apt to hear.

Lost or Stolen ATM or Debit Cards:

Charges to your lost or stolen credit card cannot exceed $50.

Theft or loss of an ATM or debit card can result in significant economic loss. There are rules to follow or only the devil to pay, so listen up!

You can’t be held responsible for any unauthorized use of your ATM or debit card if you report it is missing prior to its use.

But if the unauthorized use occurs before you report it, the amount you can be held responsible for depends on when you report the loss to the card issuer

If you report the loss within two business days after you realize your card is missing loss is limited to $50.
If you report its loss after two days but before 60 days after your statement is mailed to you your liability tops out at $500 for unauthorized transfers.

If you fail to report an unauthorized transfer within 60 days after your statement is mailed to you, you risk unlimited loss. That means you could lose all the money in your account and the unused portion of your maximum line of credit established for overdrafts.

The only way to avoid the operation of these time limits is if you can demonstrate some valid reason, like sickness or serious injury that stopped you from doing your duty under the rules.

Also, state law or the contract can set lower liability limits for you and those lower limits will apply instead of those in the federal EFT Act.

Once you report the loss or theft of your ATM or debit card, you’re no longer responsible for additional unauthorized transfers occurring after that time.

Because these unauthorized transfers may appear on your statements, however, you should carefully review each statement you receive after you’ve reported the loss or theft.

If the statement shows transfers that you did not make or that you need more information about, contact the institution immediately, using the special procedures provided for reporting errors as stated above.

The ability to stop payment under the EFT Act is severely limited. EFT transfers are designed to be as quick and as effective as cash sales so that it’s up to you to resolve any problems you encounter with the seller and get your money back yourself. You cannot stop payment in electronic funds transfer land except in cases where you’ve prearranged payment from your account and you let the institution know before they pay.

Although federal law provides only limited rights to stop payment financial institutions or state laws may offer more rights. Check into it and see if you can’t get what you need.

Finally, the EFT Act prohibits financial institutions from requiring you to repay a loan by electronic transfer and you have the right to choose your institution if you’re required to receive your salary or government benefit check by EFT.

EFT Tips

To Avoid Electric Shock

If you decide to use EFT:

Know where your ATM or debit card is at all times.

if you lose your ATM or debit card it report it as soon as possible.

Choose a PIN for your ATM or debit card that makes it difficult for a thief to use your card.

Keep and compare your receipts for all types of EFT transactions with your periodic statements and report errors promptly.

Make sure you know and trust a merchant before you share any bank account information or pre-authorize debits to your account.

But be forewarned that these rules do not go to all cases that are common today. The act does not cover any prepaid balance cards, such as phone cards and many types of store gift cards and certificates we see around so much today. While these may operate electronically they may not be covered by the act so that the rules designed to protect the consuming public may not be in effect.

Checking Accounts

Checks, the other paper instrument

Everybody knows that a lot of people keep track of credit card activity. The network for credit card information is so highly developed that credit cards information is often available to vendors at the point of retail sale. Just think of the last time you used your debit or credit card and you will see just what I mean. But a lot of people lose track of the bigger credit picture when they only think about how they are handling their credit cards. There are; others who watch and record checking account activity, and they often do it for the same reasons that people look at your other forms of credit. So you want to make sure that all your ducks are lined up in a row so that your credit stays good at every place you go. This is how you make your credit grow.

In the old days people used checks for several reasons. Check users often were people who didn’t want to use credit cards. Perhaps they were responding to the terms of a seller who wished to be paid by check. Or maybe they wanted the document as a memorial, or record, of their transaction.

No matter what the reason, checking offered the buyer something that instant credit could not, and that is the element of time. Instant credit may not give you the chance to try-out and adequately inspect the item to be purchased. It is not uncommon for something to end up working differently, or looking differently, than we think it will when we see it on the showroom floor. The check has to clear the bank and go through posting- and this may take a little time. That often gives the buyer the chance to study the purchased items really well and better determine if it meets their needs. If it is not right the buyer can cancel the check and not have to go through any problems in getting their money back. The buyer can just say, for example, that the washer does not fit the space or décor of the house and stop the check. Then the seller can come out and get the item and the buyer gets their money back.

Well, some check users noticed that the time between the issuing of the check and its presentation to a bank and processing represented a period of time that they could say they had credit that was not actually there, and some people did just that.

Sometimes they would pay for things at the end of the week and hope to replace the funds by the time the check went through. The distances the bank of the buyer and seller make this crooked little game all the more interesting and inviting. The problem was that nobody was happy if the person who wrote the check did not come up with the money. Bankers figured out what was happening to them but their hands were bound by the law. The laws of checks call for certain procedures in their processing and some of these rules mention the presentation of the actual check. What this means is that if your bank is in California and you go to Florida to charter a boat to fish for marlin, like Hemingway used to do, and you use checks to pay the Captain and crew in Florida, that no one will know if you don’t actually have the money in your account until the Captain’s bank seeks payment of the check from the bank in California.

This state of affairs has had bankers unhappy for some time, but now it seems that they’ve done it- they’ve found a way to process checks more quickly and that means that there is less and less time from time you pay with a check to the time the balance is displayed for the check.

Check 21 is the name of a new law passed a few years ago to help speed up check chasing by letting the bank sidestep some of the processing procedures required by law. The bank can get away with making a “substitute check” that it can pass freely. A substitute check is the legal equivalent of the original check. It has all the same all the information contained on the original check. Now there is nothing in the law that says that banks have to accept checks in this electronic form but you may discover these substitute checks among the real ones you get with your periodic statement and that is why they are in there. What this means in layman’s terms is that each of us has to be a little more careful in managing our checking account these days because you don’t want to snared in a broad net that scoops you up along with some shady characters.

So for the unscrupulous check writer this makes writing checks for amounts beyond those available at the time they write the check a kind of Russian roulette proposition. They have to ask themselves just one question, do they feel lucky? But for the average consumer it presents a sort of mine-field where you could find yourself standing on shay ground because a shorter timeframe than you are used is in effect.

To see what this recipe can lead to just remember that credit agencies keep information on checking history. This means that third parties can see this information and make judgments about you on its basis! Will they even want ask you if you can explain a legitimate mistake? Will they even care? Let’s just say that some unhappy consumers have learned, to their horror and dread, that even one bounced check reported by one of these services may be enough to make it difficult for you to open a new transaction account or get a merchant to accept your check as payment.

Check reporting is there to protect financial institutions and retailers from losses due to over drawn or fraudulent checks. What’s more, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is federal law that lets records of checking “irregularities” that come to their attention to stay on your private records for as many as seven years.