Adventures with TeleCheck.
Yesterday, because I care for the ears of both my listeners, I bought a software pitch correction program, and to use it I also had to go buy some sort of USB security dingle dongle from ilok.
At Guitar Center, I tried to pay with a check but I was “declined” by TeleCheck Check Writer Services, so I paid with a credit card and returned home for a half hour of phone calls with TeleCheck.
Here are a few things I learned:
- If you try to get to an operator, the Voice System autofascist will hang up on you.
- Once you get through to an apparent human, if he or she asks you for a piece of information, you have one minute to retrieve it or they will hang up on you.
- Approval of a check is not based on the actual money you have in your account but on the “TeleCheck Risk Guidelines.”
- If during a purchase an inattentive clerk mistypes your information, the driver’s license number, for instance, the information associated with that driver’s license number is attached to your information at Telecheck. If the information associated with that license number that is not yours is “negative,” Telecheck considers your account negative, which will cause you to be unable to write checks anywhere TeleCheck is used. What’s more disturbing, according my interpretation of the words coming out of the mouth of the TeleCheck drone I spoke with, any driver’s license number written on your check, including the numbers of people you may be paying (landscaper, plumber, etc) is then associated with your account at TeleCheck Land. If they have “negative” information, so do you.
- To remove the negative misinformation from your TeleCheck account, you must send them photocopies of your identifying information and a nice letter explaining that you are who you say you are.
My feeling is that it’s not my responsibility to correct their bad information, though it might be in my own best interest to do so. According to Everysandwich Quality of Life and Blood Pressure Reduction Guidelines, we would rather just not do business with merchants or services that use a system as crappy as TeleCheck.
So that you might enjoy the the conversation with the TeleCheck drone, I recorded it for you. Enjoy.
Or, if you would just like to hear the conclusion of the first call to their voice mail system, here ya go.
