Comet not accepting cheques

You may well ask. But some people choose not to activate the switch function on their cheque cards, and find it easier to keep track of their spending using their cheque stubs, and anyway the nice machine at the checkout also prints the cheque out (well not all of it, but it was too nice an alliteration to pass up on).

Also, not all shops are geared up to take plastic. It's cash or cheque. I was in a pub earlier this week when a punter casually enquired, before ordering his pint, whether he could pay for his food and drink by plastic. "No," he was told, "but a cheque will be fine". At that very moment another punter was just paying by cheque, it must have been for twenty quid because I'm sure I saw a tenner in the change.

I hear there there's a roaring trade in 300s.

Personally, I've only had the bank machine give me 200s once. I showed them around the office (most hadn't seen them) and changed them downwards ASAP. I get scared with such large notes but the shops seem happy.

Tim

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

He got change when paying by cheque? Why didn't he just write a smaller amount on the cheque? ["Would you like cash-back with that, sir?"...]

No idea. Haven't lived there in 30 years or visited in 8. I occasionally order bassoon reeds from a maker in Freiburg, and I used to send him a eurocheque drawn on my Royal Bank of Scotland account until they were abolished recently. This last time I paid him via mum's current account at Deutsche Bank, using said transfer order forms (but unlike the method I just described, i.e. where the supplier provides the form pre-printed with his bank account details, this involved a blank form provided by mum's bank, on which both payee's details and payer's need to be filled in).

I wouldn't have thought so, though, not for the weekly shopping, anyway. Would you pay with a £300 note even if there were such a thing?

According to the press they are easy to forge, and ?300 forged notes are circulating. There is, of course, no legal ?300 note.

The Germans do seem resistant to anything but hard cash.

In message , Alan Norris writes

How did they get through the screen on the counter?

Ah, thats sounds like the old 'meat' system!! This isnt a joke, but I know of a bank branch that was in a huge abattoir and it had its own 'settlement' system for traders. It worked like that.

It just like our system of paying a bill by BGC isnt it?

Yes, and the branch networks.

Er thats tiny!!!!

Yah!

Thats right though. It was when banks actually provided a 'service'?

The on-line version still just seems to generate an old-fashioned Bank Giro transaction which takes days to arrive the other end. OTOH, a cheque doesn't hit your account until a couple of days after the other party has banked it.

If the banks _really_ want to reduce the volume of cheques they should launch a product that says to the major receivers of cheques 'This payment is in the system. You will receive it in three days.'

"Steve Firth" wrote

Eh? Are you trying to say that un-crossed cheques (were) legal tender? Or that *all* cheques were legal tender before cheques became commonly crossed (ie whether it was crossed by hand or not)?

Where on earth do you get this idea from?

[All those retailers being *forced* to accept simple cheques in payment for goods, even without a guarantee card, must've made them shudder!]

From the large (ish) number of uncrossed cheques that were in circulation in the 1960s before crossed cheques put a stop to the practice.

"Steve Firth" wrote

I'm sure there may have been (and still are!) a number of little slips of paper being passed around with the letters "I.O.U." on them. But that doesn't make them "legal tender". Do you even know what "legal tender" is??

IN the UK in the 1960s and in Italy where I now spend much of my time uncrossed cheques were/are accepted as legal tender in many places. I only found this out in Italy after making the mistake of paying a local builder with an uncrossed cheque. The cheque wasn't presented to the bank even a year later and I had to chase down a network of friends and neighbours, shops and wholesale suppliers until I found the person holding the cheque and persuaded them to cash it. The cheque had been used as if it were a banknote and I can recall the local pub trading in cheques in similar fashion back in the 60s.

Maybe not "legal tender" but being used as if they were legal tender a little like Scots bank notes.

"Steve Firth" wrote

Why not just deny payment of the cheque after the "6-month" deadline?!! :-)

"Steve Firth" wrote

It certainly makes you wonder what would happen if you "stopped" the cheque! That'd teach 'em!!

[You can always stay legal by simply paying the builder again, say in cash.]

Not quite. Paying a bill by BGC involves the payee sending you what is basically a pre-printed paying-in slip for their account, which you can use at any branch of any bank to pay in either cash or cheques. With the German system the payee sends you either a pre-printed form or information you can write onto your own blank form, but this form is not like a paying-in slip, it is an instruction from you to your bank branch to transmit funds from your account to that of the payee. The form cannot be used anywhere, you have to send it to your branch, and they will action the transmission if funds are available. There is thus no possibility of a bounce, when the funds arrive, they arrive ready-cleared. This system cannot accommodate cheques or cash, it is only for direct account-to-account transfers.

Both systems have the disadvantage that the payee doesn't know a bill has been paid until he gets his next bank statement. But the German system has the advantage that once the funds arrive, they are there to stay, because the transfer simply won't happen unless cleared funds are available to transmit.

In message , Ronald Raygun writes

It sounds very much like the rarely seen debit authorities that worked like a 'one off' standing order. I can see how it works. I wonder if the very latest Money Laundering rules would allow it though? Do you know if it is still used in germany?

In message , Steve Firth writes

This isnt 'being used as legal tender' its 'being generally acceptable'. There is a huge weight of difference between the two, the most obvious one being that the definition of 'Legal Tender' in UK relates ONLY to Bank of England Notes, and as such cheques could never be.

In message , Tim writes

The rules of negotiability would render the drawer liable to all the people who had been a party to the cheque for the full amount plus damages. They could be sued by any party without any further evidence then the unpaid cheque. All your future cheques would become unacceptable and all cheques you had in circulation would be presented for payment almost instantaneously as holders presented directly to your bank for payment. Only you would suffer and you may as well change your surname to Mudd.

"john boyle" wrote

Surely, in law you only have a contract with the original receiver of the cheque? The mere act of writing a cheque made payable to a creditor cannot create contracts between yourself and anyone else that might be passed the cheque, could it?

If you stop the cheque, then of course you must still be liable to pay the original receiver (the person you wrote the cheque out to) - just as much as if you hadn't written the cheque out at all. But surely any subsequent dealings between him & a third party would be relating to a contract between the two of them - and not you - so if the cheque was stopped, the third party would only be able to go back to the person you first gave the cheque to?

As you have never entered into a contract between yourself and the third-party, how can they sue you for the amount on the cheque?