Letter to the Editor
Local business
Published Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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To the editor:
A local business informed me today that they neither wanted or needed my business. How did they do this? By posting a notice on the door to their business stating that “effective immediately, we will not accept personal checks.”
I and my wife go out of our way to support our neighbors by patronizing locally owned businesses — we feel it’s worth paying a bit more than we would spend if we were to order online or go to one of the box stores.
In return, we expect to feel that our business is appreciated. Refusing to accept personal checks tells us that the owners of this business don’t really care about good customer relations or maintaining customer loyalty.
It’s particularly galling in view of the recent effort by a group of local merchants who are trying to combat the takeover of the Fairbanks market by the chain retailers. I understand the problem of collecting on bad checks, but that’s always been part of doing business — aside from the fact that passing them is against the law.
It works both ways, folks. Local people will support local merchants if they’re made to feel welcome and appreciated. Arrogance and indifference will drive them away.
Community Discussion
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Visa Check Card. Welcome to the 21st century.
From your letter I doubt you are in a position to fully understand how much a business can suffer from a few bad checks. Collecting on bad checks is not the problem. The majority of the time the business never gets paid. If you were a mechanic and you did $2500 worth of work for a customer, would you just hand him the keys if he wrote you a check? Even if you call the bank to verify the funds, how do you know the money will still be in the account when the check gets there?
Accepting checks is risky business. Mostly due to lowlifes who abuse the trust of local merchants. I understand this is not your fault, but going after local businesses with a torch and pitchfork is entirely misdirected.
Paper checks are going the way of the dinosaur, and not because businesses want to alienate their customers.
The economic crunch is on, and I know that more frequent incidents of insufficient funds checks are likely to be written as a result of the desparation, and related decreasing honesty in such circumstances.
But;
Businesses won't take my check, then I don't shop there.
Businesses won't engage in helping to resolve a purchase problem, they can do without my money too.
Businesses scoff at a request to locate a product, then they don't need my money either.
Businesses shuffle me through an unstaffed, computer-controlled check-out stand, rather than provide a clerk, then I can skip their place on my rounds of errands..
Businesses won't back their product or their word, then they can watch as their income drops as well. (And other prospective customers will hear about the experience).
Remember when 'customer service' actually meant... customer service??
Dirk,
I agree with you 100%.
When was the last time you heard a cashier actually say "Thank You" upon completing a purchase. From fast food to box stores...customer "dis"service is the word of today. My teenage daughter who works in one of the fast food stores (who actually says thank you to customers), mocks those folks who just hand you the merchandise and moves onto the next task at hand. It's most unfortunate.
I owned a business for 3 years in Fairbanks. I accepted checks (without a check guard machine). Over those 3 years I only received 3 bad checks.
Checks?
Are you kidding me?
The last time I needed to write a check was.....
Wow, I don't even remember.
Ask your bank for a check card and move into the present.
I have to agree with sdoownek -- My wife and I (we live in Georgia now) have had our current bank account for a few years and I think we're still on our first book of checks from this bank.
We use the bank's website to pay nearly all of our bills. We write the date so rarely anymore that the old comedy of writing the wrong year on checks for the first two weeks, is a joke we can only tell to people our age: anyone even a few years younger would have no idea what we're talking about.
I've heard rumors that there used to be these little green pieces of paper that some businesses actually accepted as renumeration for their services. Does anybody know what these slips were called? I hear they aren't worth much these days. Apparently they get printed in China now, probably by imprisoned Tibetans.
I owned a business and I accepted checks, including from out-of-state tourists and newly planted military families. I never had a bad check. I still write checks to pay bills. Of course I use a card too. My mother writes checks because she cant grasp the concept of using a card. Its too bad businesses are forced into not accepting them. You would think in this day and age that it would be fool-proof, kind of like inspecting possible couterfeit dollar bills (with that special pen or light they use).
I still use checks as well. Not everyone is set up to pay bills on line, knows how to do it, or even has internet. Also, care must be taken when using debit cards. Unlike credit cards sales, if someone (such as a dishonest sales clerk) steals your account number from a sales receipt and takes money out of your bank account, you are out of luck--the bank will not cover your losses.
I have never seen a sales receipt for a debit or credit card transaction on the machines where you slide your card (like the grocery stores use) that had the account number on it. I believe the only time you might have to worry about a dishonest clerk is when a credit card machine is used, or when it's a phone order.
Checks also impose costs on other customers by making them wait longer in line. I'm looking forward to the day when cash is eliminated too; just credit, debit, and gift cards (useful for anonymous purchases for privacy types). But the criminal punishments should be increased for identify theft.
A few months ago I went into a long established downtown store. I bought a couple of items valued at about 12 or 13 dollars, paid for them with a credit card which I swiped through a machine. A few days later I checked out my credit card on the internet and found an extra charge of 20 or so dollars on my card. I went back to the store and found the charge had been made 2 minutes after my other charge. they said ok we will credit your card. They did'nt seem at all curious as to how it happend.
The reality with checks is that most people don't rely on them anymore. Because of that, it's been my experience that when some people do choose to use them (not everyone, of course) it is because they have insufficient funds in their account. This is what has initiated a shift in business practices. In our current banking culture, check-writers are oftentimes check-bouncers or check-floaters. It's kinda like squawking about pay-first gas pumps. Businesses changed the policy because the risks were too high.
Candikane - well put.
Alaskaflower - Several credit/debit card sliders print out the card number on the receipt. I am not sure why this is, but it does happen.
<----GUILTY...It's probably my fault. I mostly use checks when I have NSF because of my overdraft protection. It will pay it and then I can put it in later, but then I need the money for bills. Then it bounces and sigh....I have great intentions...If I open a business (well when my fiance' does because unlike me he is responsible and has great credit) I for sure will not allow checks. I don't think they should get rid of checks for things like car payments and electric bills where you can just add back to their accout, but for items you can't repo or bill to their account.. you bet I won't take checks...I am horrible! I don't think it's bad business, just smart business. Because of horrible people like me, I know. I really am sorry :(. But it's smart for them not to take the checks. It's all my fault.
We don't bounce checks. We have a very excellent credit rating, and we intend to keep it that way.
I don't make purchases on-line if at all avoidable, nor do I store any sensitive information of that sort on my hard-drive, and I don't do electronic banking, with the sole exception of automatic deposits of the PFD checks.
A (disk/collection of disks) from a major bank was lost or stolen a year or so ago; on that disk were the personal info. of roughly 4,000,000 customers.
I routinely have banks call and ask if I want to buy credit/fraud protection. It's extortion, in a way. They typically don't come right out and tell you that if the (data mismanagement or security breech), or point of theft, involved -their- mishandling of information, or something entirely out of your control, caused electronically, elsewhere, that it's not the consumer's liability. In fact, more often than not, it's the bank's liability. I make certain of that, by guaranteeing that if there was an electronic breech of security, it had to be theirs. ;^>)
Lots of folks speak of the security and ease of electronic transfers, banking, etc., but I see a whole lot of evidence to the contrary, and even if it doesn't end up being my liability, the interim inconvenience of either identity theft or illicit acccess to my account(s) is more than I'd care to deal with.
Cash, checks, the occasional credit card or debit card (when absoutely necessary) is how we do business.
And for many reasons, that'll be how we continue to do buisiness.
So, if you're standing behind me in line at the store, and I'm not paying with cash, I'll be the grumpy-looking, graying-haired, gray-bearded fellow who's scribbling like crazy, and likely writing his check faster than the clerk can get an authorization approval on your card.
If that's too much to ask of others' time, then they can always go to that faster line, where all of those other folks are standing who haven't paid close attention to how sensitive information travels across the wire, and just how easy it is to access for those who have ill intentions, and too many questionable computer skills. ;^>)
Checks are very dangerous. All this informatioon - checking account number, bank routing number, your name, usually your address and your telephone number, your signature, and even sometimes your driver's license number all on one little piece of paper. I keep a checkbook for my rent check and one donation I do, and I HATE keeping it anywhere someone could steal it relatively easily (like my purse in the grocery store). I would MUCH rather get a credit card or debit card stolen because they can be canceled right away, although debit cards make me a bit nervous because you still have unlimited liability if it's stolen, unlike a credit card where it's capped at $50 by law.
But still....I absolutely do not understand the argument by people concerned about privacy and security that checks are somehow safer than plastic.
But back to the original letter - I would not take checks if I owned a small, local business. They're time-consuming to process even if they don't bounce. And if they are NSF you are pretty much SOL. Just a couple small bounced checks for a small propietorship could mean the difference between making a profit or not that month. I think the complaint of the original letter writer would be more founded if it was a big national corporation that could more easily absorb the loss that decided to stop taking checks. More businesses have lost my business because they don't accept plastic yet (although I understand why they may choose not to) than those who don't take checks. I find going to the ATM to be a hassle and I find checks to be an even bigger hassle. I think it's the direction of businesses these days, and personally, I am pleased about that.
Well the bad news is plastic, and paper won't be used to pay for anything in the sometime future. All you will need is either a forehead, or a hand. Don't shoot the messenger, Revelation 14:9,10
Kewlpop - you call that bad news? A monetary system this embedded in your hand? It would be impossible to steal (as long as you were alive) and impossible to loose. I'd take the "mark" if that's what it refers to in Revelations.
I was told recently that Denali Park will no longer take checks or CASH!
Only debit or credit...What happens there if the power gets cut for any length of time? Bet they don't have the old fashioned swipe machines for credit cards either!
I love that if the power goes out at the store any more they don't know what the price of anything is cause it's in the computer :o)
Most checkers wouldn't even be able to give you back the exact change if they didn't have it right in front of them on the screen of the register. If they can even open it. The whole store is shut down if the computer crashes..HAHAHA
All in all I believe all of us are getting stupider as a result of all the "Technology"! What the heck would we do if we got cut off from the grid?
Our high school graduates of today couldn't pass the eighth grade a hundred years ago..That is such a sad statement! Our ancestors would be so proud!
I know a business in town that will NOT give refunds. You have to buy something else...I DON'T SHOP THERE ANYMORE.
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