Letter: Act leaves consumers at a disadvantage

I am concerned with what happens with our ability to challenge what we as consumers need to have available to us to get acknowledgment of payment to a creditor or a provider of goods or services as a result of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act.

This allows a creditor to withdraw funds electronically from our checking account without presenting the check to our bank. The bank then has no canceled check and thus the drawer of the check gets no facsimile of the check with a bank statement.

I have found this to be a problem in a dispute, since no evidence of the purpose for which the check had been written is available to the debtor or customer to prove, with a precise memorandum on the check, that the obligation has been met. Sometimes checks are written with the purpose of paying more than one obligation. For example, health care providers may request payment for a number of services on several different dates. It is my practice to include on the memorandum of the check the dates of service and the provider of the service. My experience with billing from medical care institutions has required several challenges of account statements and in the past I did use copies of the facsimiles to support my challenge. Now that institution withdraws funds from my account electronically I have no resource to support my challenge.

This puts the consumer and/or debtor at a disadvantage when pressing a claim.

Alan A. Seabrooke

Elgin