How to Verify a Check Over the Phone
If you're in business and you accept personal checks, there is a certain amount of risk involved with each one that you accept.There are several alternative forms of payment, and you can try to get one of these first, such as a money order from the post office or a convenience store. Also consider a cashiers check from the bank, which can be bought for a small fee and is good anywhere. If you do find yourself having to accept a check, there are a few ways to find out if that check is good.
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Instructions
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Look up the bank's phone number online or in the phone book. Never call a phone number on a check; it could have been put there by a counterfeiter. The phone number could be a drop phone, usually a prepaid, untraceable cell phone used by scammers to falsely verify the check.
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Call the bank and ask if you can verify funds on the check. Some banks won't do this due to privacy concerns, but some will. All you have to do is read off the numbers on the bottom of the check and the amount of the check and the representative can tell you if there are enough funds in the account to cover it.
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Take action if you find out from the bank that the check is not good. Your options are to keep calling the bank every day until the funds are available, or call the person who wrote the check and work out a different way for them to pay you.
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Wait until you are certain that the money is actually in your account. When you hear that the check has cleared, this doesn't mean that the money in your account actually belongs to you. It just means the clearing house hasn't sent the check back for insufficient funds, a closed account or any flag instructions on the account. The check could still be rejected.
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Tips & Warnings
At www.fedchex.com, you can verify a check online. Fedchex also has a large database of over 190 million records that gives merchants information on bad-check writers.
It may save time to use a free routing number look up tool called RoutingTool (see Resources). At this site, you can get the name of the bank and the phone number by typing in the routing numbers at the bottom of the check.
Be aware that any time you accept a third-party check, (where someone else's name is on the payee line), you're liable for the amount of the check as soon as you endorse it.
References
Resources
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