Dixie Motors Car Care

Mark Tramell is the kind of guy who checks his bank accounts every single day. So when trouble came, the owner of Dixie Motors Car Care in Savannah, Ga., spotted it right away.

Years ago, a member of his family had a run-in with identity theft, and since then, Tramell has kept a close eye on his personal and business accounts. Every morning, first thing. 

Last January he noticed a problem with Dixie Motor’s business account with Ameris. “I checked it and saw that some Joe Blow tried to cash a check, and it wasn’t written to them,” he said. In the 26 years since Tramell and his brother, Tim, had assumed ownership of the auto repair shop from their father, John Tramell, it was the first time that someone had attempted to write a fraudulent check on their business account. So, Mark Tramell texted Ameris Bank Savannah Market President Greg Marini to alert him of the issue. On a Saturday. At 7 a.m. 

A Quick Stop and a Pivot

Branch Manager Nicole Erickson got word from Marini and reached out to Tramell. “I saw the email come through on my cell phone and knew it was urgent,” she said. “I went into the account and saw that the check was pending, so I placed a stop payment on the check. I also placed a block on the account so no other fraudulent checks could post to the account.”

Erickson asked Tramell for a list of all outstanding checks and preauthorized withdrawals, so the returns department could monitor the account for additional fraud attempts. It turned out that a total of four checks were stolen. None got through.

But it was enough for Tramell to seek a new strategy for his beloved family business, which has operated in the same location since 1980 and has a loyal customer base of more than 6,000.

With the crisis under control, Erickson suggested a plan to protect Dixie Motors from similar problems in the future: Positive Pay. Positive Pay from Ameris Bank automatically catches fake or altered checks before they post to the account by comparing them to a data file provided by the business.

Positive Pay Puts Your Business in the Driver’s Seat

Ameris helped Tramell get the new system up and running. It took a little getting used to, but he was comfortable with it in just a few days. 

“Before Positive Pay, I was writing probably about 21 checks a week, 16 of them were payroll. Now I wait to write them all on the same day. I upload my file from QuickBooks to Excel, and from Excel to the bank,” he explained. If the checks posting to his account match the ones he uploaded, then they go through. If something doesn’t match, he gets an alert to approve the check manually.

“I’m annoyed that my checks got stolen and made me do this,” Tramell said. “But I’m not annoyed with the system in general; I’m glad it’s there. One hundred percent, I feel like it’s safe, and I feel like I’m in control now of everything that’s going out because I’m sending the files.”

He also added ACH Positive Pay, so that all deposits and payments going through Dixie Motor’s accounts are protected. 

So far, the alerts he has received, called exceptions, have all been due to a mismatched number on the file or some other minor human error. “I’m an early morning guy — I’m at work every morning at 5 o’clock. The exceptions come at about 6 or 6:30, so perfect, I can take 60 seconds at most to approve them.”

Banking Services Tune-up Saves Dixie Money

While reviewing his payment procedures, Erickson also looked at his merchant processing system and recommended a switch to Clover credit card processing. “They’re saving us a ton of money,” Trammel said. 

Erickson said it was all in a day’s work. “Overall, we able to step in, in time of crisis, and help Mark with this stressful situation and get him the peace of mind he needed.” 

Does he still check his accounts every day? “I sure do,” he admitted. I will probably do that until the day I die…  I just can’t seem to quit.”

But he doesn’t expect to find a problem. “The local president and the branch manager I deal with, they couldn’t have been any better. It’s good to have a local sense of banking,” Trammel said. “I feel like I could pick the phone up and make anything happen that I needed to make happen.”

A True Partnership

That feeling of accessibility goes both ways. For Greg Marini, the relationship with the Trammell family has always extended beyond the walls of the repair shop.

"When I started banking him, I also moved my personal fleet of vehicles to him as I have three sons that were driving in addition to my wife," Marini said. "At the time, it was six cars and referred numerous clients. To this day, my sons still reach out to him for their vehicles—off my payroll! It's a true partnership."