An internal error at T. Rowe Price Financial Services has resulted in clients receiving images of other clients’ checks.
According to a September 15 letter written by their Vice President, Deborah D. Seidel to the New Hampshire Department of Justice:
… due to an internal error, images of checks that we processed for two T. Rowe Price clients that are New Hampshire residents were inadvertently sent to the wrong financial institution.
The company notified the two New Hampshire residents by mail on September 11 and indicated that they were “mailing similar letters to affected clients in other states. ”
In its notification to those affected, the company explained:
Thank you for your recent purchase on August 24, 2009, into your T. Rowe Price account. We have applied [check xxx] [for {insert amount}] to your account and provided separate written confirmation.
We are writing to inform you of an issue that occurred regarding the check you provided for the purchase. When we receive a check, we send an electronic file containing an image of the check to your financial institution so that we can obtain payment. Depending on the services that your bank provides, this image may be available in your online banking profile when you click on a particular withdrawal or a copy may be provided in your statement or upon request.
Unfortunately, a T. Rowe Price internal error arose concerning the electronic file that included the image of your check. As a result, the image of a check we received from another T. Rowe Price client may be provided to you by your financial institution instead of your check, and vice versa. The information that would be available to the person who was provided your image in error is the information preprinted on the front of your check, such as your name(s) and address, the name of the financial institution where you have your checking account, and your checking account number, plus any information you wrote on the check you sent us, such as the dollar amount of the check or your T. Rowe Price account number. If you would like a copy of your check or if you would like to change your T. Rowe Price account number, please call us at the number listed on the next page.
We are working to attempt to retrieve the image of your check from the financial institution that has it, but this may not be possible, or it may have already been made available to the other person. While we believe the risk to you from this incident is low, we deeply regret it and we have arranged for you to enroll, at no cost to you, in an online 3-bureau credit monitoring service (TrueCredit) for one year provided by TransUnion®, one of the three nationwide credit reporting companies.