Cheques not cashed for years.?

Psycho Sonny said:
£14k obviously your boss earns too much to forget a cheque of that size just lying around. I'd like to think I'd go out of my way to bank it within 2-3 days if not immediately.

As for cheques not being accepted its a terrible inefficient system. You have plenty of better options like bank transfer, cash, PayPal, etc. Using cheques today is like using morse code. Most places refuse them.
Click to expand...

You do now yet you seem to be having a go at people who have loads of cheques from 10, 20 years ago. The world was a much different place with more money exchanging via cheques than bank transfer, cash, paypal etc.

Hell cheques are still used by a lot of businesses today. We are building a new house for a client and monthly staged payment from the mortgage company comes by cheque in the post every month and we are talking about £150k per month.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
They likley still use them because they know a percentage won't be bothered to cash them.
Click to expand...

Its the opposite, most businesses are desperate to get off cheques.
Unlike personal banking cheques cost businesses far more money than e payments

They have to buy the cheques (these arent cheap)
They have to pay the bank for cheque processing again not cheap
Their back end systems need to log each and every cheque so that when its cashed they know which are still outstanding
They need to deal with requests for duplicates when lost, thrown away by mistake etc
They have to sign the cheques, if this is automated then that creates a control risk and needs secure locations/secure storage and secure access to the signer machine if done via a virtual signature process
If they are being done manually they need to have people actually sign the cheques who will need to see backup in order to validate the cheque is correct
You have to actually post them, again either taking someones time, or paying another body to do this, again postage isnt cheap in the UK (although many will still send a physical remittance when making e payments (derp))

So why do they do it?
Its often very hard to get other companies to respond in requests for banking details and these need to be validated (for obvious reasons). Companies are far less open on banking details than individuals.
 
Narj said:
The cynic in me is convinced that cheques are still used in a lot of situations because the issuer knows there's a chance it won't be cashed!
Click to expand...

There was that story (no idea if true) from years ago that a bright man came up with the idea of one of those adverts you used to see in the paper for stuff where he advertised something like a zippo lighter for a stupidly cheap price. He got sent hundreds of thousands in cheques and did actually have some zippo lighters he supplied but the rest he sent back with a cheque and a letter saying sorry due to massive demand he had run out of lighters.

But the refund cheque he sent back was a printed cheque from his other company he owned which was something like "Anal intruder ***** ltd" and only 20% of the refund cheques were ever cashed. He relied on the fact that because people had to go into their local bank to pay the cheques in and everybody knew everybody back then so people would be too embarrassed to ever cash the cheques in.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
They likley still use them because they know a percentage won't be bothered to cash them. So they win. I got one for £3 and never bothered because it would cost me £15 in petrol to cash it in.
Click to expand...

Exactly this. Virgin broadband sent me a small cheque (less than a fiver) because they'd miscalculated my final bill when I'd moved house 6 months earlier. I asked them to transfer the money to my Virgin mobile account as a credit but they couldn't do it, so the cheque got forgotten about because my bank is 5 miles away and I never to there.

I've no doubt they bank on this happening in a large proportion of cheques issued.
 
bainbridge said:
Exactly this. Virgin broadband sent me a small cheque (less than a fiver) because they'd miscalculated my final bill when I'd moved house 6 months earlier. I asked them to transfer the money to my Virgin mobile account as a credit but they couldn't do it, so the cheque got forgotten about because my bank is 5 miles away and I never to there.

I've no doubt they bank on this happening in a large proportion of cheques issued.
Click to expand...

Not so much nowadays though as most banks allow you to pay in cheques up to £1000 by just scanning them from your mobile or if not you can just post them to the bank. They had to bring that in once they closed all the branches. My bank used to have a branch in the town I work but they closed it around 4 years ago and my nearest branch is now 30 miles or a 45 minute drive away.
 
Greebo said:
Not so much nowadays though as most banks allow you to pay in cheques up to £1000 by just scanning them from your mobile or if not you can just post them to the bank. They had to bring that in once they closed all the branches. My bank used to have a branch in the town I work but they closed it around 4 years ago and my nearest branch is now 30 miles or a 45 minute drive away.
Click to expand...

Granted, the landscape has changed since got that cheque. I wonder if a freedom if information request would force a large service provider to publish the ratio of cheques issued /cashed?
 
Narj said:
The cynic in me is convinced that cheques are still used in a lot of situations because the issuer knows there's a chance it won't be cashed!
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Took me 4 months to cash my royal cheque.
I resorted to switching banks to do it!

Natwest you still have to go to post office or branch to cash. So opened Halifax with thier 100 switch offer and cashed it from my desk with cool photo thing.
 
Greebo said:
There was that story (no idea if true) from years ago that a bright man came up with the idea of one of those adverts you used to see in the paper for stuff where he advertised something like a zippo lighter for a stupidly cheap price. He got sent hundreds of thousands in cheques and did actually have some zippo lighters he supplied but the rest he sent back with a cheque and a letter saying sorry due to massive demand he had run out of lighters.

But the refund cheque he sent back was a printed cheque from his other company he owned which was something like "Anal intruder ***** ltd" and only 20% of the refund cheques were ever cashed. He relied on the fact that because people had to go into their local bank to pay the cheques in and everybody knew everybody back then so people would be too embarrassed to ever cash the cheques in.
Click to expand...

I've heard variants of that story. I suspect something along those lines happened originally to inspire the tale though.
 
My Mother received a cheque in the post not long back for the grand sum of £0.01p, and it was sent recorded delivery. Would've been cheaper and less hassle to just sellotape a penny to bit of card and post it 2nd class.
 
Feek said:
Just looking on one particular statistics site, there have been nearly eight million contacts made using Morse code so far this year and that's only by people who use that site.

Are you trying to make an analogy with something you know nothing about?
Click to expand...
Is this the first time you've read a Psycho Sonny post? :D
 
Roddy Starr said:
My husband David died last December and i have uncovered a heap of cheques which have never been cashed,some are in my name surprisingly,and some 20 years old.
David was a hoarder and going through his office is going to take at least 2 years,some cheques are for small amounts and some are for hundreds of pounds.
Does anyone know if i can do anything ?
Thank you.
Click to expand...

There isn't a mandatory time limit on cheques in the UK, but the advice to banks is a maximum of 6 months. You could contact the people/companies that wrote the cheques and ask for replacements. Might be worth a try, at least for the cheques for hundreds of pounds. Or you could ask your bank for advice. Maybe they'll take older cheques.
 
Angilion said:
Now I'm curious - why is Morse code still at least fairly widely used?
Click to expand...
Remember I'm not talking about commercial use, I'm referring to amateur (hobby) radio.
It can be received at much weaker signal strengths than voice - When radio conditions are bad, it's still possible to make a contact using Morse code if propagation isn't there for voice. I have recordings of quick contacts I've made with people in unusual countries where you'll barely hear anything than mush but right in the noise, there's a very weak Morse signal.

It can be very quick. Radio hams often travel to unusual countries (as mentioned above) where they are very popular and a lot of other amateurs around the world want to talk to them. A contact using Morse can be completed in fifteen seconds or so which is up to four per minute.

It can be very slow. It's used for experimenting. I have a transmitter here which is smaller than a fag packet and runs lower power than a mobile phone. It's transmitting an incredibly slow Morse signal, so slow that it takes about seven minutes to send my callsign. Other experimenters around the world can receive that and use it to study radio propagation. @Chris Wilson does similar but on very, very low frequencies.

It's fun. Learning Morse is a challenge and a lot of people enjoy using it. I'm far from being a very competent operator but I enjoy using it when I do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom