Ingles

Dear "stunned" - if you have enough money in your account, why not just use a debit card and be done with it? Why hassle with a check?

This weekend I took my family to the Ingles store in Dallas NC. After ringing up our bill, which was $540, our check was declined. I asked the clerk to call the check in, as I had plenty to cover that amount, and was refused. The clerk provided an 800 number which turned out to have nothing to do with the decline, but was the main number for the parent company of a vendor that screens checks for Ingles. I pride myself on having excellent credit, and have many times over the amount of the check amount to cover. I regularly write large checks to Ingles, as we are shopping for a family of four, shop infrequently due to busy schedules and are blessed to have the means to buy what we want, which includes the impulse and convenience items Ingles so desperately wants to sell given the higher margins. We have been advantage card members for some time, since we saw our first Ingles in Anchorage, and drive past a half a dozen competitor's stores to shop at the Dallas location monthly as we like the selection of higher-end products. No more. I have never been more embarrassed than I was at that store, to be called out as financially unworthy in front of my neighbors, my children and my wife, when I maintain the kind of credit worthiness that lenders dream of. Then I find out, after calling the vendor and spending 30 minutes in phone hell, that Ingles uses a "service" which calculates an algorithmic equation that declined my check based on the fact that I don't write a lot of checks (really? welcome to the electronic age) and the amount was "large". I agree with that last part. You won't see me spend a "large" amount in that store again. I'll drive an extra twenty miles round trip to the big Harris Teeter in Charlotte before I ever darken their doorstep again. Of all the ways I can think to run off a customer, this is the lowest, most inconsiderate and stupidest I have ever heard of. Why don't they use the same point of sale check debiting system that other stores use? You know, the ones that would never tell a customer who likes to spend large amounts in your store that their money was no good?