Posted on 06/13/2010 3:58:55 PM PDT by Virginia Ridgerunner
Call it "scared straight" for bad check writers: a holistic approach delivered with a barking threat of legal action to get and keep their finances in order.
The York County District Attorney's Bad Check Restitution Program has been in operation since June 2007. More than $267,225 in restitution has been returned to area merchants because of it.
And more than 800 defendants have avoided a bad check charge on their records by making good on their bounced checks and paying for a financial accountability class that makes the program no cost to the county.
But one Spring Grove man got steamed when he learned the letter threatening him with prosecution if he did not enter the program was not mailed from the district attorney's office -- as the letterhead makes it appear -- but rather from a California-based debt collection company contracted by the district attorney.
(Excerpt) Read more at inyork.com ...
Seems kinda shady to me. Comments?
I'm only half joking, I haven't written a check since sometime in 2002. I pay everything online or with my debit card. I never even bothered to get any checks made when I moved and opened a new account, I still have the "counter checks" they gave me when I opened the account.
“Seems kinda shady to me. Comments?”
Kind of like the DUI school run by the brother-in-law of the Judge?
If these same schools stopped teaching the false idea that right and wrong are arbitrary concepts it would have even a greater impact.
LOL If a person wants to write a check that’s fine, but have you ever been behind someone at the checkout who has to write a check even though the checker can print it. Then they take the extra time to substract it etc.
Then, after they've spent five minutes writing the check and handed it to the cashier, they wait for the cashier to ask for their driver's license before they launch the next expedition into the purse to start looking for it.
Bingo! We have a winner!
( not to mention any government teaching anyone about kiting checks. )
Maybe shady, maybe not.
I have owned retail businesses in the past, and you always get some bad checks, just like you always get some shoplifting.
The $165 cost for the course is not excessive. If the guy complaining is prosecuted for his bad check it is going to cost him at least twice that, unemployed or not.
If he had simply gone to the dentist he wrote the bad check to and paid him, the whole issue would never have arisen. In fact if he explained his unemployment situation, the dentist may have waived the charge.
My experience has been that I could collect on 60-75% of the bad checks I got by sending a letter to the writer. The rest were all in the $20-25 range and it just wasn’t worth the energy to go after them.
I have little sympathy for those who think they have some kind of special privilege to kite checks because they are unemployed.
The solution to all of this is simple.
Use a debit card ! Step into the year 2010. I rarely even carry cash much anymore.
Just a swipe...
I even used my debit card at the movie theatre the other day. It took away some of the pain of the $10 dollars for tickets and $20 worth of popcorn and drinks. Not having to reach for cash. Call it an optical delusion. Swipe, now pretend somehow the money didn’t just leave my checking account. LOL
I use my Paupal Debit card for everything too. 1.5% Cash back on just abour every purchase. That means if I buy 100 bucks worth of groceries I get back a buck fifty. TO some its not worth it to me its Free Money. And I have yet to find that free money spends any different than money I earn. Until it does I'll take all I can get!
PauPal should be PayPal... (fat fingers)
I agree. How about this. The check will be paid in full in 10 days, or you will begin a jail term.
If I recall, and I hope I do correctly, Michigan Dept. of Corrections had a tether program that was owned by the former director of the DOC.
Pint of milk for 67 cents, yep that’s an old movie.
I'm only half joking, I haven't written a check since sometime in 2002. I pay everything online or with my debit card.
I write one check a month for my rent. Use a debit card everywhere else. The only time I spend cash is once or twice a month on the taco truck that stops by work.
BTW, I'm pretty sure most vendors these days can debit a check instantly using the routing and account numbers. Not much different than swiping a debit card except for the time it takes the customer to write out the check. The days of "floating" a check for a few days between paychecks have been long gone for awhile.
That’s why you use your debit card!
Hello I am the guy who’s face was splattered over the Sunday front page of the York Daily record as a whining check bouncer when I brought these facts to the paper to investigate.
The previous incarnation of this company was sued in PA for 2.5 million to pay back people defrauded of money like ME, declared bankruptcy, and reformed using the same offices, phone numbers, paperwork, threatening letters, tactics, and Connections with DA’s and prosecutors NATIONWIDE, to continue this Liberal agenda indoctrination program.
They had us take personality tests asking if we get mad if someone drives to slow? To determine if we were type A personalities... an old lady that bounced a check for 12.00 will be eating beans for a month after being SCARED into paying $200.00 for this MANDATORY class to avoid prosecution. The Newspaper literally REMOVED all of the relevant facts from the story to make me look like an a-hole
Read these links, this sh*t is criminal in a way only the Obamanation Administration could allow.
http://www.insidearm.com/go/arm-news/collecti...
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp...
http://www.lawcash.com/class-actions/american...
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