Question: When copying a check, do you need to take any extra precautions? Do
you just copy it straight? Do you block out the account number at the bottom? Do
you shrink it to thumbnail size? Do you copy the back?
Somebody here must have been in this situation.
You’re finally able to pay off that long standing debt that has been sitting on your
head like a constipated elephant. You’ve feared what may eventually happen, but
you don’t have any ability to help yourself, except to squirrel away money here and
there, in the hopes of freeing yourself from that beast.
Finally, you send the payment that officially ends the debt. You’ve freed yourself
from the elephant.
However, when you think you are in the clear, another elephant arrives,
seeking you as a convenient foot stool. It appears that as your check cruised its
merry way to debt collector #1, their client moved its business to debt collector #2.
Now they are harassing you for money that is in collector #1’s hands.
Naturally, they don’t talk with each other; they’re not the enemy, you are.
"How dare you NOT pay our client. I don’t care? What, your grandmommy is sick?
Too Bad!
What, mommy’s dead? So, Sad. PAY US!!
What, you’ve already paid someone else? So now you think you’re innocent,
because you’ve already paid someone else! Let me tell you something, you ain’t
innocent until you prove your innocence."
You can see all of the fun I’ve had during this episode.
Now to thoroughly mix my metaphors, I’ve got my exhibit “A” for them, the
cancelled check I sent to collector #1, with all the markings on it to prove it is the
same debt that they are hounding me on. In fact this check goes into a locked safe,
just so that in anyone else gets in my face about this debt, I can just whip it out and
say, “I don’t think so!”
But how should I photocopy this cancelled check? Copy both sides? Front only?
Obscure the account number on the bottom? Leave it alone?
WSM SterlingNorth
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
—Mark Twain