I recently had the unpleasant experience of having checks declined after trying to make a purchase at two different department stores. My son is 13 years old and he draws benefits from the social security administration. His money is deposited into his checking account where I am the representative and I write the checks. I am responsible for accounting where and how all of his money is used. We decided to do some school shopping and drove sixty miles to the closest shopping mall. My son decided to shop at one store first and we made a purchase by writing a check from his account. My son then decided to go to another department store and this time when we attempted to make a purchase by writing another check from his account, we were denied. The salesman that was working was very sypmathetic and provided me with a card where I could call the check reading company and see why our check was declined. Before I actually called this company, we thought we would try another department store and see if the same thing would happen. It did and we were declined once more, but this time it was a different check reading company. I was so furious and humiliated. I immediately walked out of the store and used my cell phone to call one of the check reading companies to see why our checks were being declined. I knew there was plenty of money in the account and couldn't understand why we were being declined. When I made the phone call, I was even more angrier at the explanation which has brought me to this crusade that I am on to make the public aware of what happened to me and my son. The eplanation provided to me and my son was that the check showed no history of any negative activity, but was considered a security risk for the merchant and also considered a risk for the consumer for identity theft. I thens asked,' why is it considered a security risk? The representative then informed me that because it showed a history of us writing a check earlier that day and it was more that the amount that they were willing to cover. THe representative then proceeded in trying to get me to fill out an application to become a Gold member to protect myself from this ever happening again. I shouted at the representative, I already pay a fee to my bank to handle all of my transaction, why would I want to pay a fee to them to approve my checks. Without the representative actually saying it, their company was holding my sons money hostage because they decided that it looked suspicious to them. My question to everyone is how can a third party make the decision on how and where and how much money a consumer can write a check? Why is a third pary allowed to manipulate consumers checking accounts in the way that they did to my sons? I was also told that we should find an alternative way of making purchases like paying with cash or by credit card. Then it started to make a little more sense. Pay with a credit card and the credit card companies make more money because of the finance charges. Who wants to carry large amounts of cash on them whenever they go shopping. I have made several formal complaints on this exeprience, but guess what? No one cares. I suppose it will take the holiday season to make the retailers realize that people like to make their purchases the way they want to and like to make multiple purchases. I was told by the Marketing Director at the mall that we visited, that I was a unique case and that no one else had ever had this type of problem and she was able to write as many checks as she wanted. Has anyone else ever experienced this with the check writing services?