Substitute Check Policy

In October of 2003, the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21) was passed into law and went into effect October 28, 2004. The goal of this act is "to improve the overall efficiency of the nation's payment system." Since today's check processing environment involves extensive transportation costs and is time consuming, this law allows for the creation of a new negotiable instrument called a "substitute check" which will expedite the check collection process.

In certain cases, federal law provides a special procedure that allows you to request a refund for losses you suffer if a substitute check is posted to your account (for example, if you think that we withdrew the wrong amount from your account or that we withdrew money from your account more than once for the same check). The losses you may attempt to recover under this procedure may include the amount that was withdrawn from your account and fees that were charged as a result of the withdrawal (for example, insufficient funds fees). The amount of your refund under this procedure is limited to the amount of your loss or the amount of the substitute check, whichever is less. You also are entitled to dividends on the amount of your refund if your account is a dividend-paying account. If your loss exceeds the amount of the substitute check, you may be able to recover additional amounts under other laws. If you use this procedure, you may receive up to $2,500 of your refund (plus dividends, if your account earns dividends) within 10 business days after we received your claim and the remainder of your refund (plus dividends, if your account earns dividends) not later than 45 calendar days after we received your claim. We may reverse the refund including any dividends on the refund, if we later are able to demonstrate that the substitute check was correctly posted to your account.

If you believe that you have suffered a loss relating to a substitute check that you received and/or that was posted to your account, please contact us at your local branch, call us at (888) 732-8562, or sign on to Member Connect at www.lgfcu.org and send a secure message to request a refund. You must contact us within 60 calendar days of the date that we mailed (or otherwise delivered by a means to which you agreed) the substitute check in question or the date of the account statement showing the substitute check was posted to your account, whichever is later. We will extend this time period if you were not able to make a timely claim because of extraordinary circumstances. Your claim must include:

• A description of why you have suffered a loss (for example, you think the amount withdrawn was incorrect);
• An estimate of the amount of your loss;
• An explanation of why the substitute check you received is insufficient to confirm that you suffered a loss; and
• A copy of the substitute check and/or the following information to help us identify the substitute check: the check number, the name of the person to whom you wrote the check, the amount of the check.