CrossCheck Blog

Whether the patient walks, gallops, flies, or leaps its way into the office, veterinarians care for a wide range of their customer’s beloved companions. Despite the best efforts of the vet and his/her staff, the result of animal care isn’t always what everyone had hoped for. When it comes to serious conditions and emergency pet care the price of treatment can be a surprise. If you add an unfavorable outcome, it could lead to payment disputes. Written checks are a widely accepted payment method by veterinarians. When a misunderstanding or dispute arises, customers can issue a stop payment on their check. Stop payments are difficult to collect on especially if the consumer is unhappy about the result of their animal's care. Luckily, there are services available to protect your pet clinic from the pitfalls of stop payment checks. Read below the break to learn more about the impact of stop payments and the services available to protect your veterinary practice.

If you are a merchant, there cannot be too many things that are more aggravating than getting a notice from your bank that you are not going to get paid because a customer put a stop payment on a check written to you. Your first reaction would probably be surprise, then disappointment, and then anger. “How could they do this to me? … I gave them a good product at a good price and I provided good customer service too.” As detailed below, there are legitimate reasons for requesting stop payments. On the other hand, writing a check and then stopping payment to avoid getting charged can be considered check fraud, which is a crime actionable at law. Before we get into all that, let’s look at how a merchant-customer relationship is supposed to work.

Buena Vista Auto Works repairs a customer's vehicle, accepts a check payment for the services, and sends the happy motorist on his way. All is well until the next morning when the driver discovers that he wrote the check for $4,000 instead of $400, the correct amount. In this instance, most people would simply ask the shop to destroy the original check and write an amended check for $400. Unfortunately, the customer decides to initiate a stop payment on the $4,000 check at his bank instead of contacting the shop for resolution. The bank charges him a $35 stop-payment fee and the shop now possesses a check with no apparent value. What recourse does the shop have?

Americans love heist movies and the media loves to write about them. Conduct an online search, and one will find over 25 pages of links to all-time lists from a diverse group of orgs including imdb.com, Hollywood Reporter or The Wall Street Journal where the irony of a conservative financial publication covering films about corporate espionage does not get lost on even the most casual observer. On February 4, 2016, a cyber-heist of galactic proportions struck the international banking system, and there is every reason to believe a Hollywood interpretation will appear on the big screen as soon as the legal dust settles.

As much as companies wish to provide a great product or service all the time; payment disputes still occur sometimes. These can be due to customer and merchant disagreements over work quality, an overall bad experience or a misunderstanding by one or the other party. In any case, these are almost always uncomfortable situations and unpleasant for the merchant to settle. Even so, when they happen, having a stop payment service in place gives businesses protection and reimbursement should the customer halt the payment for services rendered.