Cheques - x pounds only

Strife212

Strife212

Strife212

Soldato
Joined
15 Dec 2007
Posts
16,565
Does anyone else wonder why people write "only" then put a huge line through the rest on cheques? What am I going to do, write "and ninety nine pence" afterwards?

It's not like it would work with "Fourty Pounds and Four Hundred Pounds"
 
I think it's to ensure that the person didn't forget to write the rest of it in the middle of writing it or something :p so bank knows that there's no mistake as far as the amount goes and no case of the person forgetting to mention something.

But hey, this is just a guess on my part.
 
It's just a way of ending it, to ensure nothing can possibly be added on. Fair enough now 99p isn't a lot - but cheques were in use a long time before 20009! They existed when pay was measured in pence per hour - stealing 99p (99d) off someone at that time could well have been a big deal.

And as anyone who's ever worked with assembly langauge before - a non-terminated string can wreak all kinds of havoc!
 
yes, 99p on one cheque might not amount to much but when you deposit 100 cheques a day like I used to...........
 
Strife212 said:
Does anyone else wonder why people write "only" then put a huge line through the rest on cheques? What am I going to do, write "and ninety nine pence" afterwards?

It's not like it would work with "Fourty Pounds and Four Hundred Pounds"
Click to expand...

To prevent anyone altering the amount on the the Cheque. As said, it would be easy to add 99 pence or even change the pound amounts, having two seperate records of the same amount of the same peice of papaer elps prevent fraud and mistake. I do not work for a Bank, I am just older nand possibly wiser ;).
 
Strife212 said:
Does anyone else wonder why people write "only" then put a huge line through the rest on cheques? What am I going to do, write "and ninety nine pence" afterwards?

It's not like it would work with "Fourty Pounds and Four Hundred Pounds"
Click to expand...

Because cheques are quite open to fraud, and doing that is one way of reducing the risk. Likewise writing firmly in biro rather than fountain pen although plenty of people do the latter.
 
I do recall hearing a story (don't know if it was substantiated) from an Inland Revenue worker who said something about a huge cheque fraud going on in the IR, basically someone was intercepting the cheques going to the IR and changing the payee details to read Inlandi Revenuey (or something like that) they opened up a bank account in that name and creamed a fair amount of cash out of it until they got caught.

Not really on topic, but it always tickled me! Cant even recall when i last had a cheque book, let alone wrote a cheque?
 
Fourstar said:
I like what you did there. So what are you - old and stupid, young and wise, or both young and stupid? :p
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Old and daft as a brush. One does tend to pick up things over the years though. I started banking when cheques were all the rage and plastic was for the richer people, Amex and Diners Club, that sort of thing. Access and Visa were just starting to enter the affray. Alan Wicker used to do loads of adverts!
 
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