In the future you'll have no choice but to pay electronically, by
> plastic, or go online if, as expected, Britain's banks vote tomorrow to
> phase out the tradition dating back more than 300 years of payment by > cheque. >
> Cheques cost up to £1 each to process ? and the number written has been
> falling steadily.
I'm confused, how can a cheque which requires at least one person to manually process each one only cost £1 when it costs £35 for a computer to print an automated letter.
its called balancing the books...
I placed a substantial sum into my personal account and the following day received a letter asking me to contact a certain member of LloydsTSB asap giving their mobile phone number. So why, when we go overdrawn, can they not also issue such a rapid letter to the customer informing them of the problem BEFORE hitting them with massive charges...this they call BUSINESS.
Because when you have money they want to sell you some service. When you go overdrawn you have already "bought" an expensive product off them and don't need to bother the sales team.
This means, of course, you have to reveal your bank account details to anyone from whom you want to receive payment. Aren't there security problems here? (I know such information isn't so secret anyway, but it's spreading the information to a lot of people you'd possibly rather not have access to it.)
Tiddy Ogg gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Go and look at the bottom of any cheque.
Surely the only security problem is that someone might pay money into your account, which I can live with :).
"Phil Stovell" wrote
... or (eg) set up a Direct Debit to a charity, as happened to Jeremy Clarkson?
In message , Brown Cat writes
My bank does not charge me for the letters it sends, but perhaps that's because it sometimes has to borrow some of my money to lend to those who are careless enough go over their overdraft limit?
What does that prove?
If you pay me a cheque, I can see your bank account details - but *you* don't need to know *mine*, like you would if you were doing a bank transfer instead.
What's needed is an "alias" for your account that can only be used for credits, not debits. You could happily give this to anyone.
I don't think you need to reveal anything that wouldn't have been clearly visible on a cheque.
But previously you'd have had to reveal nothing. Why reveal anything to someone who already owes you money? OK this alias thing someone mentioned is a possibility, but seems more hassle for no reason except to give the banks more cash - I'm sure they'll charge for it.
"Tiddy Ogg" wrote
Hmmm. After you've banked their cheque, and your bank has passed it back to their bank via clearing, and they ask their bank for a copy of the back of the cheque, won't it show the account details that it was paid into (ie, yours) ?
"Tiddy Ogg" wrote
It's only in recent years that this obsession with not revealing personal information has developed. In the past, most people would never have worried about giving out their home address in order for someone to send them a cheque by post. Instead of that you now reveal your bank account details. Whichever way you receive money surely you're going to have to reveal some personal information.
That thought came to my mind too. Have they closed that loophole yet? I've never had any message from my bank about Direct Debits being set up. A small amount on someone's busy account (or a busy someone's account) could go unnoticed for a long time. I can see the bank weasling out of the direct debit guarantee if you hadn't been checking.
Chris
IME you need a signature to authorize a DD.
People have become much more aware of privacy and security issues nowadays. Part of this I'm sure is down to so much personal information being mishandled (i.e. lost) by many organisations. That and the proposed National Identity Register, of course.
Mark gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Not necessarily. Some large organisations can set 'em up over the phone, but (IIRC) they have to lodge a fairly hefty deposit in case of claims under the guarantee.
When I was younger a friend of mine worked for a summer at a cheque processing facility. Sacks of cheques were tipped into a large scanning machine. Any that could be (I assume only printed ones) were OCRed - no manual intervention at all. For any that were not satisfactorily OCRed (I assume there's some sort of confidence threshold from the algorithm) the image was sent into a room full of people in front of terminals. As each image came up they'd type the numbers and move on to the next. I don't know how many they'd get through in an hour, but at £5 per hour or thereabouts the cost per cheque of the human part of the process is not high.
Pete
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