MCRD/ERR PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. -- Shoppers who write bad checks at the commissary may soon see money deducted from their bank accounts on payday.
The Defense Commissary Agency recently implemented a policy for collecting money owed on customers' returned checks.
Before the new policy, commissary officials had to make two attempts to collect the money through an individual's bank, a process that involved a lot of time and paperwork.
With the new policy, however, commissaries will no longer have to wait up to two months to recover funds from a bounced check. The commissary will send the check to the bank once. If that fails, the money owed will be deducted from the customer's bank account on military paydays through a collection agency called Solutran, according to Gerri Young, a DeCA spokeswoman.
If no money is available in the account on payday, the request for money will be sent to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to retrieve the money owed from the service member through their chain of command.
According to a DeCA press release, five commissaries in the United States have been test locations, and more will soon be added, eventually bringing the entire system under the process.
Although the new policy has not yet been implemented in the Depot Commissary, employees are looking forward to the change because it will cut down on the number of bad checks, as well as the time-consuming paperwork that goes with retrieving funds.
"I think it will be a good policy to deter a lot of returned checks because it's a slap on the wrist for some people, but it's not something taken real seriously," said Linda Cleveland, lead sales store checker for the Depot Commissary.
According to Jim Gibb, store administrator, there were 16,143 Commissary transactions for the month of January. Of those, 17 were customers who wrote bad checks, less than one percent of all transactions. The Commissary receives an average of 10 - 15 returned checks per month.
"We might only have 10 - 15 returned checks, but depending on the dollar amount, it might be $200 - $300 per check," said Cleveland. "That's money that we have to collect - money that the Commissary is losing."
Gibb said the number of returned checks is not as big of a problem as it used to be, now that processing a check takes a lot less time than before. A process that used to take 7-10 days now only takes one to two days.
So, shoppers who think they can write a bad check and get by because the check will not clear until after payday can think again.
"It used to be that way, but now checks go through the next day," said Gibb. "Even on the weekends, our checks go in on Monday."
Commissary employees said although some shoppers may deliberately write bad checks, they realize that many of them are truly by mistake.
"I do realize that sometimes people make genuine mistakes in their subtraction," said Cleveland.
"If you're doing it in your head, you can easily make an error. A one in the wrong place can really throw your check book off, especially if all your dollars are accounted for," she added.
Whether a bounced check is deliberate or not, the new policy will ensure that every dollar owed, whether $2 or $200, is paid in full.