How can Wachovia deduct money for an uncashed check?

@news.qwest.net:

The problem with these is that not everybody does 'em. For example, try paying your accountant or lawyer this way. Or try paying your gardening service or landlord or something like that. Also, if you pay 20 companies via electronic debt and then one month, for some odd reason, perhaps a medical reason, you cannot make payments or full payments. Now you have to call 20 different companies or log into 20 different company's web sites, 20 different usernames, odd passwords, they changed their site, etc., etc. just to get the payment temporarily stopped or reduced for a month or two.... Or you could simply do it all from one place, inside your Quicken so that Quicken is always up to date first... You're choice.

That's one solution. Considering you haven't named another solution - it's the only solution!

I prefer to have utilities and credit card companies paid via automatic deduction. ... because?

I know I am privileged in being able to write a check against my equity loan to cover unforeseen expenses, but I (including my spouse in this "I") worked and saved for this. It's still "writing a check". How 20th century!

Now, for the really important bills there is no worry that they get paid. Real estate tax and other taxes I still handle without automation, but they are "announced" in my Quicken register ahead of time. IOW you have no automatic solution at all and prefer doing it the old fashioned way for no stated reason! Gee where can I sign up for that!

Water bill requires a real check, sorry to say.

Ah, no it doesn't or rather is the water bill does not accept an EFT then a real check will be cut and mailed to them. It's just that you wouldn't need to do it nor be concerned about it if you used online bill payment.

-- Andrew DeFaria Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!

There is NO way that a third-party will cut a check and mail it yet another party without YOU incurring a substantial service charge.

Water bill requires a real check, sorry to say.

Why's that, Han?

In this town, the water department is run by the borough (Fair Lawn, NJ). I paid a few times by telling Citibank via Quicken to cut them a check, but the water department told me in no uncertain terms that they wanted a physiccal check, Huh? If you told them to pay by check (which, BTW, you can't do - they either accept EFTs in which case an EFT is used or otherwise a check - one of the paper ones BTW - is sent).

plus the stub from the bill. Luckily we don't have to affix a stamp, but can deliver the envelop to them without that expensive USPS stamp.

Like I've said, I've been paying everybody - that's EVERYBODY - via online bill payments for 12 years now. One time a police department down in Laguna Nigel insisted that I stuff the envelop with their stub. Aside from the fact that their "stub" was long since tossed in the garbage, thus I had no way to stuff the envelop even if I wanted to, and I told them that over the phone, I was not about to make a paper check just for therm. I resent the online bill payment and told them in no uncertain terms that this is legal payment and they could take it or reject it if they wanted to but I have made payment. It took them like 6 months to cash it but finally they did. And this was a police station/local government.

I'm not obligated to make payments by standing on my head. The only thing that any biller needs from the payment is the account number, which you designate for online payments. Online payments are legally correct and you shouldn't need to do anything to bow to the bill payers antiquated methods of accounting - that's their problem - NOT YOURS.

-- Andrew DeFaria I know how I want to die...shot at the age of 108 by a jealous husband!

As I said in a previous post, the only checks I write out now regularly are for magazine renewals, because I feel uncomfortable I could ever validate a payment if the electronic one went awry.

I think that's a waste of good paper (for the checks). I pay those things by credit card. Unfortunately that will c ost the merchant a fee to the CC company, but that is up to Congress to fix (at least in the US).

If you really believe that then you are naive. All businesses build such fees into the cost of doing business meaning they simply adjust their pricing structure to account for such things. IOW they simply raise their prices.

-- Andrew DeFaria If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

sharx35 wrote: Mock me if you will, however MY methods enabled me to retire from full-time work at 42. Can YOU make that claim? Aside from the fact that I don't know what your statement here has to do with my post, yeah sure I can make that claim! In fact everybody can make that claim! Now proving that claim is quite a different matter and quite frankly totally irrelevant to this thread.

Many people I know, thanks to their foolhardy spending habits, will NEVER be able to retire. They just HAVE to have those 40 bottles of frou frou bottled water every week and those 40 cups of frou frou designer coffee every week, for example. One definition of happiness is WANTING what you have rather than HAVING what you want. I have my finances organized so they are virtually "bomb proof". It would take the end of the world, literally, to throw them out of whack. Rambling on and on and on... Yeah dude. Whatever. Bomb proof finances... Right...

-- Andrew DeFaria Hit any user to continue.

Andrew DeFaria wrote in news:469c268b$0$504$815e3792 @news.qwest.net:

Let's rephrase the "problem". Credit card companies charge merchants for using their cards. Something like 4% of the amount charged, I believe. For businesses this cost has to be incorporated into their pricing strategy, because often, their margins aren't that great.

Rather than giving a discount for cash (which may or may not have it's own cost for a business, like carrying it to the bank, administering it, etc), businesses are prohibited from disclosing the cost of credit card transactions and from using separate pricing for cash and credit cards.

... "Actually you shouldn't be required to validate payments either. That's the task of your bank/Checkfree. If payment not received or properly credited then they are supposed to find out why." ...

So Andrew, when (assuming you have magazine subscriptions) that have zillions of digits on the renewal certificate without a clear indication of which one is an account number, what do you do with those myriad of digits? Do you enter as many as you can on some 'memo' field on the electronic form and hope that helps?

-- ------------------------------------------------------------- Regards -

- Andrew

Define substantial. And who said anything about price? No, nothings for free son. Or at least nothing that's worth anything.

You do realize that you can set up automated payments too don't you? You sound ignorant of the process. Educate yourself!

Well whoope T f****ng do for you! The facts remain, even if you wish to remain ignorant to them.

Actually for a while. Recently I had some health problems which put me out for a while. I survived quite nicely without having to dip into my savings.

So says you - and with no prove I might add. I can as easily claim that I would survive for 100 years if one upsmanship were required, specially considering I, like you, would not need to prove anything. However such things are foolish...

Code for: :I might have misspoke. Let's restate the problem in such a way as to try to make my error unrecognizable..."

"...and gee I failed to do that because the reader was paying attention!"

Sorry dude but that's unpersuasive. Simply put if the cost is passed along then it's of no cost to the person or business passing the cost along. The only way that it's a cost is if you are paying in and the only person paying it in this situation is the consumer...

natural resources. I'd much rather burn up natural resources making electricity so that I can use a computer to read such things.... :-)

Report back on how it goes.

Andrew DeFaria wrote in news:469cdb7a$0$504$815e3792 @news.qwest.net:

Well it's about f****ng time! It figures when you are outwitted you run like the coward that you are...