If a creditor calls you, tell them you are now with a credit counseling agency and they should call 402-393-3100. Give them your client number and the name of your account manager.

If you need to make a change to your EFT payment, send WRITTEN NOTICE to us no less than 10 business days prior to your pull date. Our fax number is 402- 393-4141.After faxing, wait 30 minutes then call us to verify your request has been received.

You money order or Western Union payments must be in our office by 10 AM July 20th to be processed for end of month.NO personal checks, thank you!

Please be advised, in the event an electronic funds transfer (EFT) or bank account has one of the following challenges, a charge will be assessed to your CA account.

Some Banks Are Making A Mint On Bounced Checks

What will happen if you have written several checks all the while knowing it is going to be tight to cover all the checks at once?

If several checks arrive at the bank on the same day, some banks will sort through the checks and process the check for the largest amount first.This greatly increases the chance that you will be paying overdraft charges on the other checks.

Banks charge an average fee of $25.00 for each returned check. Yikes! That can hurt.

Most banks make no apologies for paying the largest check first. A Bank America spokesman says, “Customers have told us they want their largest checks paid first.”Chase Manhattan says, “We feel the largest checks are the most important to our customers so this has been our policy for years”.

There are not any federal or state laws that tell banks which checks must be processed first. There is no legal requirement to notify customers of the processing order or changes in the processing order.

Banks make large profits on bounced check fees. A bad check costs a bank between $.50 cents to $1.50 to process. Out of 173 million checks processed by banks on a daily basis, 1.3 million are bad.

With gambling and casinos becoming legalized in many states, banks are seeing an increase in problem bank accounts.

The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter what order your checks are processed in if there are not enough funds in your account. So make sure you have money in your account to cover any checks.

(The who’s who and the what’s new in the creditor world of today!)

When you compare your billing statements each month with the client statement you receive from us, do not forget to think about the creditors who no longer send statements. It is not uncommon for a creditor to stop sending statements when an account has been put on a debt management plan. These creditors can be subject to all of the same changes in address, name, and account numbers as the creditors who send you regular statements.

If you notice an office has moved, or a name has changed, please notify us.Many businesses will continue to cash checks made out to their old name (ie: Norwest and Wells Fargo) In many cases the first indication we receive that a creditor has moved is when mail is returned labeled ‘Forwarding Order Expired”.Credit Advisors needs to have any changes in place as soon as possible to prevent a delay in payment posting.Our clients are the first link in the chain. We rely on you, as active participants in the program, to report any changes you notice.

Here are some items to consider as you review your statements:

Please contact us if you have any accounts with collection agencies where the original creditor is Amoco, Citgo, British Petroleum (BP Oil), American Express, Providian Bankcard, or Citibank. We can get these accounts taken out of collections for you.

In the last month, some creditors have changed their requirements for proposals.If a creditor advises you they do not have an accepted proposal on file, let us know as soon as possible.Usually, it means they want us to send more information on household budgets and other creditors involved.We are sending the additional information, but if your creditor has more questions their reps may tell you “they haven’t received a proposal on your account.”

If you receive a notification from a creditor that a balance is due on an account that we show is paid in full, contact us immediately.This will allow us to research the matter and verify the information. Since your creditors do not send us statements on your account, we rely on you to help keep us updated.

Please e-mail, fax, or mail us copies of your creditor statements every three months.

Check out our bookstore for more great reading on how to save money.