Your check was declined at the register, and the slip in your hand names TeleCheck. That slip means a consumer report decided your check looked risky. TeleCheck’s file on you is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and when a declined check traces to an error in that file, you have the right to see it, dispute it free of charge, and be compensated for what the error cost you.
What TeleCheck is
The CFPB’s consumer reporting company list places TeleCheck in its check and bank account screening category: it helps retailers, financial institutions, and other businesses reduce the risks of accepting checks and opening accounts, using check-writing and checking-account information — and it supplies payments data to lenders for credit underwriting. TeleCheck is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fiserv, and its verdict arrives in the moment, at the register, before you can say a word in your own defense.
The company has been penalized over accuracy before
In 2014, TeleCheck agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle FTC charges that it failed to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, did not follow proper dispute procedures — including refusing to investigate disputes — and failed to promptly correct errors on consumers’ reports; its debt-collection arm, TRS Recovery Services, was charged under the Furnisher Rule in the same action. The penalty matched the second-largest the FTC had ever obtained in an FCRA case — the identical sum its competitor Certegy paid a few months earlier. The accuracy duties TeleCheck was penalized over are the same ones that protect you today.
Where check-screening files go wrong
A returned check you already made good on that keeps reporting. A merchant’s keying error tied to your driver’s license or account number. Someone else’s bad-check history matched to you — the same matching failure that produces a mixed credit file. A “risk model” decline built on wrong inputs. TeleCheck sits alongside Certegy, ChexSystems, and Early Warning Services in our check and bank screening directory — files almost nobody monitors until a transaction fails in public.
Your rights: the file is free, and the dispute is federal law
Per the CFPB’s listing, TeleCheck will provide one free report every twelve months if you request it — through getassistance.telecheck.com, by phone at (800) 366-2425, or by mail at TeleCheck Services, Inc., Attention: Consumer Resolution Services, P.O. Box 6806, Hagerstown, MD 21741 — delivered within fifteen days of the request. If anything is inaccurate or incomplete, dispute it in writing with proof — a bank statement showing the check cleared, a receipt showing the balance was paid — and the FCRA requires a reasonable investigation, free of charge, with correction of whatever cannot be verified.
When it becomes a legal claim
If declined checks, a lost purchase, or a closed account trace to file information that was not yours or not accurate, and a proper dispute did not fix it, the FCRA provides actual damages, statutory and punitive damages for willful violations, and attorney’s fees — which is why we handle these cases on contingency. A company the FTC already penalized over its dispute handling does not get the benefit of the doubt when your documented dispute goes nowhere.
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Richard Kim is rated 10.0 out of 10 on Avvo, with 35 client reviews averaging 5.0 out of 5 stars (as of August 2026) — read the reviews on Avvo. Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts. You pay nothing unless we win.
Published by The Kim Law Firm, LLC — about attorney Richard Kim. Last updated August 2026.