Posted 7/19/2004 07:17:00 PM by Douglas

I can remember when "theft by check" was all the rage. Now it's all done on computers and appears to be relatively easy.

Banks are supposed to refund any unauthorized withdrawals, but there are fewer consumer protections than there are for fraudulent credit card charges. It is not always easy to convince a bank that a charge is fraudulent, since banks often argue that using the correct account number is proof it was authorized, consumer advocates say.

That can't be right, can it? All you need is account number? Ok, how 'bout this one: 823543. Since I have this account number, do I have authorization to withdraw money from that account? The above paragraph seems to imply that I do, but since I just pulled it out of my butt (it's actually just 7⁷) it's hard to imagine that it'd be hard at all to find a corresponding bank and withdraw all the money from that account. But no one wants that. Banks don't want their business destroyed any more than consumers want to get robbed, so why aren't they stepping up and accepting some liability here? Do they really want to go back to the days of processing billions of checks every year? They're the ones saving money by this electronic processing, so they should accept their share of the risk, just like credit cards have been doing forever.

Also, what's up with this:

It took Greene a few weeks and multiple calls to her bank before she was able to recover the $139 taken from her account. Still, she had to shell out $70 for new checks with the new account number she was given because of the fraud.

$70 for new checks? Good gravy, how many checks is that?