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.
The price of treatment can be a surprise when it comes to serious conditions and emergency pet care. If you add an unfavorable outcome, it could lead to payment disputes.
Written checks are a widely accepted payment method by veterinarians. Customers can issue a stop payment on their check when a misunderstanding or dispute arises. Stop payments are difficult to collect 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.
What Veterinarians Need to Know About Stop Payment Checks
- What happens to a stop payment check?
- Who is liable for a stop payment check?
- How CrossCheck can help with stop payments.
- How Stop Payment services work with CrossCheck.
What happens to a stop payment check?
A stop payment order on a check occurs when a bank or consumer cancels a check before it’s processed. Once the check is flagged it can no longer be deposited and will be rejected by the bank it was issued from.
Usually, the duration of a stop payment on a check is issued in six-month or one-year intervals. When the stop payment period ends it’s up to the consumer to renew it, which comes with a fee for each renewal request.
Veterinary offices will usually find out about stop-payment checks several days after an attempted deposit. Without Stop Payment services in place, you will have to contact the customer to attempt to collect payment. This type of collection can be difficult and uncomfortable depending on the situation.
Who is liable for a stop payment check?
When a consumer issues a check as payment, it can take 2-4 days to process. If the stop payment is issued within that period, the bank will reject your attempt to deposit the check.
Your office won’t learn about a stop payment until you attempt to deposit the check and it’s rejected by the bank. When this happens, you are missing out on the revenue from the payment and it will cost you additional time and labor costs to contact the customer to resolve the issue.
With Stop Payment services a trained professional will contact the consumer for you. Typically, the company providing the service will attempt to collect the funds in full with minimal/no effort on your part.
How CrossCheck can help with stop payments
If you are interested in stop payment services, you don’t need to look any further! CrossCheck, Inc. offers Stop Payment services, these services reduce the risk of never collecting checks that are returned for stop payment and guarantee the merchant's payment collection. Having Stop Payment services with CrossCheck will free up your veterinary office so you can focus on four-legged family members as opposed to spending time collecting checks that a customer has stopped payment on.
How Stop Payment services work with CrossCheck
- Your customer writes a check for the purchase
- A payment dispute occurs due to work quality, misunderstanding, or service is no longer needed
- The customer places a stop payment order on their payment
- You submit the check for claims processing to CrossCheck. We work to collect payment – saving you time and money
Click the image below to download the Stop Payment Insider's guide to learn more about how the services available from CrossCheck can help your office.
