quote:

Originally posted by LoboGunLeather:
43 years in business, 20 full-time after 23 part-time. I was always happy when customers paid the bills, even better when it happened on time.

Somewhere in the office is a file folder full of old bounced checks. Probably enough for a really nice vacation, if I could collect them.

In Ohio that's not small claims, that's criminal. Turn the stuff over to the prosecutor.

Ah yes, remittance payments, a subject near and dear to my heart.

I had serviced check sorters for a major utility company for over 18 years. The company used high speed mail opening equipment for most envelopes but also had stand alone units to open mail.

One of the employees that opened mail told me they've found lots of things along with the payments, multiple paper clips and staples, stubs damaged by chemicals, stained illegible stubs, stubs torn in half and stubs in pieces so you can't tell where the stub came from or code lines missing on the stubs. Most disgusting of all is when at least a couple of people have mailed in their stubs and payment after using them as toilet paper. I was told this has happened on more than one occasion, same person? A lot of times the stubs were accompanied by nasty, an understatement here, note how they shouldn't have to pay their bill.

When the stubs and payments reached the check sorter was where I came in. I think I can safely say I've removed several thousand staples or bits of staples over the years from check sorters. While I don't recall staples causing catastrophic repairs they did cause some damage to track assemblies and most commonly getting stuck in the encoder hammer bank requiring it be removed to get the staples out.

Paper clips on the other hand have caused some major damage to components, power supplies, circuit boards and on one particular service call a backplane.

The stubs sent out by the utility company clearly state not to use staples or paper clips to attach the stubs to the checks.

I understand what you're dealing with and you have my sympathies.