Illegal draft from my account
Complaint
Dorothy Richter
Country: United States
I received a letter from TRS Recovery stating that they had received a check I had written that had come back for insufficient funds. The check cleared the second time it was presented but TRS then WITHOUT MY CONSENT helped themselves to $50.00 saying that their sending me the letter stating I had the outstanding balance constituted consent for them to draft this $50. It does not! When I called them and asked what they were calling consent they couldn't answer the question but said "I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but that's how we operate." So I see by the volume of complaints here.
Comments
Lacking that, their fee is unauthorized, so you could dispute it as such through your bank. Sending you a letter after (or before) they charge your account is not the same as your authorization.
Keep in mind, however, that since they are in the business of guaranteeing check payments to merchants, and collecting on the checks that bounce, they could block acceptance of your checks at any merchant using their services.
Stop writing checks for retail payments. They are only a source of problems, such as this one, or due to loss, theft, forgery, alterationk, etc.
Use credit cards for retail payments to minimize your risk of loss.
Their statement is deceptive. TRS Recovery is a debt collector as defined by federal law. Use of deception by a debt collector to collect a debt is prohibited by FDCPA.
Contact your state Attorney General to report their violation of federal and state debt collection laws.
Just because some company says you agreed to let them take money from your account is not the last word on whether they get to do it. If that were so, everyone would be submitting phony charges against everyone else's accounts, and the banking system would collapse.
You can dispute unauthorized charges to your bank account under FRB Reg. E, and you can dispute unauthorized charges to your credit card under FCBA. Do it in writing, and make sure your bank gets your dispute within 60 days of the statement date of the statement showing the disputed charge.
The courts are not effective for recovering small erroneous or fraudulent charges, due to the costs and delay. The banking regulations already provide for disputing errors in charges to checking accounts or credit cards directly through your bank, under FRB Reg. E, or FCBA. With billions of transactions, errors happen every day, and they get fixed every day.
The key requirements of FRB Reg. E and FCBA are to dispute promptly directly to your bank, follow up in writing, and do so within 60 days of the statement date of the statement showing the unauthorized charge.
And since your checking account number is now floating around in a company who can use it to take your money through a couple keystrokes, you may want to close that checking account due to possible fraud.
Houston, Tx 77056
713-567-0499
P.O.Box 4857
Houston, Tx 77210-4857
Did they send you any demand letter first?