Special to the Town Crier
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's office offers merchants a free program to recover money from those who write bad checks. The program has returned more than $1.5 million to merchants in Santa Clara County since its inception by District Attorney George Kennedy in 1992.
The three-step program begins with the merchant making personal contact with the writer of a bad check. If that proves unsuccessful, the merchant sends a certified notice. The check writer has 10 days to respond and remit payment. If they fail to respond, the merchant files a complaint form with the Bad Check Restitution Program, which does the work from there.
According to Kennedy, the program uses "a unique, cooperative effort that combines private and public sector resources to educate businesses in preventative check acceptance measures."
The Bad Check Restitution Program has a 30-50 percent recovery rate, which is standard within the industry, and a 1 percent recidivism rate for people who have attended the mandatory eight-hour program.
"It's dropped our bad checks by 50 percent," said Jim Ladd, manager of the bookstore at De Anza College. "We were writing off $15,000 per year in uncollectible debts. With this program our write-offs should go to virtually zero."
Unlike collection agencies that charge up to 30 percent of the amount they recover, the Bad Check Restitution Program is free to all merchants in Santa Clara County.
A check is eligible if the amount is no more than $1,500, a photo identification was recorded at the time of the transaction, and it was submitted to the program within 90 days from the date of the check. Merchants must also be able to document a collection attempt in which the check writer had at least 10 days to make the check good.
For more information, call the Bad Check Restitution Program at (408) 297-9711.