Monday, June 25, 2007

Certegy's Website - Laugh-Out-Loud "Link Policy"

You may create a hypertext link to the Certegy Inc. homepage (www.certegy.com) provided such link does not portray us (or our affiliates or any of our products and services) in a negative, false, misleading, or derogatory manner... Finally, your right to link to our homepage may be revoked at any time by us, for any reason.



Um. No. What a person does on their own website is their own business. Certegy, you may have our financial information by the short hairs, but you're not in charge of the Interwebs. You don't have any say whatsoever in my "right" to link to your page. No permission is needed for a person to link to a publicly accessible web page.

The only possibility of a lawsuit here would be one of libel, and that would fall flat as well. I have not, to my knowledge, posted anything false or misleading. Everything on this site is derived from personal experience, experiences sent to me by others, and information obtained from reliable news sources. If an error or falsehood is found, I encourage people to contact me or comment about it.

Regarding "negative" or "derogatory" remarks, I will say only that this, of course, is a blog. It's common knowledge that blogs are repositories of personal opinions, in this case, mine. If my personal opinion of Certegy is extremely low, I have every right to say so. Welcome to the First Amendment.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Harassing Children: Part 2

A while back I posted about how Certegy was harassing a young girl by repeatedly calling her cellphone. It looks like that situation has been resolved.

Her brother writes, "Well, I finally got a hold of a real Certegy person. After entering a fake information, which included three last names, a very fake phone number, and zip code, I was finally transferred to a friendly woman with a southern accent. I asked if they were aware that they were calling a seven-year old for debt collection. She told us that they were calling my sister's number for a Miss/Mrs. McDaniels; and I told her my sister's name was Regan (it is, she didn't ask for any more information). She asked if I knew the person in question. I said no (that's the truth). She said she would update the number as a false phone number, and we shouldn't recieve any more phone calls from Certegy after today; the system would update itself at midnight.
Hopefully this will be the last time I need to deal with Certegy. I know I haven't been as lucky as others. I was all ready to tell my grandma about the whole thing; she works for the Department of Justice/U.S. Attorney's Office in our state. I'm sure she could've offered some legal advice as to what we could do about them. Anyways, I don't know what I would've done without your site and your help. Thank you so much!"

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

They're Harassing CHILDREN now!

Taylor writes, "Hello, I have a question regarding Certegy (obviously). My sister is seven years old, and she has a cell phone (she is diabetic, the cell phone is for her safety; but that is a different subject in itself). Lately, she has been getting voicemails from CPRS (which I have discovered is Certegy) about "important business matters." I am wondering if you have any idea why a seven year old - which no checking account, credit cards, etc. - would be getting calls from CPRS? I have asked her repeatedly if she has given out her number to a sweepstakes or anything else that I wouldn't consider secure. Our parents are in no debt (except for our house), and I just don't see how they got a hold of her number. I find it rather irritating that even a child isn't immune to scams."

Wow. I have no idea. My day job is teaching young children - including diabetic children - so you can imagine how appalled I am at this.

Is the phone a prepaid one, like a Tracfone, or a plan? If it's a plan, is the plan in her name? I also wonder if someone who IS in debt may have accidentally (or purposely!) given your sister's number as their own. Could she even be a victim of identify theft? That's the only thing I can think of. In order to be involved with a debt collection agency, one would have to have debt. In order to have debt, you generally need to give out your name, address, phone number, SSN, etc. etc., which I doubt your sister did. I can't believe that just giving out her phone number to anyone would be enough to get Certegy on her case.

Certegy is notorious for queries about "important business matters." Infuriating, isn't it? They are also notorious for mistakes like this.

If it were me, I would call them right up and demand to know exactly what is going on. Or have your parents do it; that's probably better. I would call them using your sister's cell phone so they don't caller-ID your home phone and give you trouble on that line too. I would just say, "I'm returning your call as requested by the voicemail message." After they tell you what's up, you can decide how to respond. My personal response would be something like, "Are you aware that the person to whom you're referring is seven years old?" You could guilt them out even more by telling them why she has the phone in the first place.

God, stories like this make me so angry!