On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 14:45:12 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-
Businesses which adopt that sort of arrogant attitude to customers tend to have a similarly arrogant attitude to customers in other ways. Such businesses are best avoided.
On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 18:15:17 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be Ed Sirett wrote this:-
It costs time to reconcile payments into a bank account with invoices. I'm not convinced either method of payment has any time advantage for the business.
Paying in cheques can be incorporated into other activities, so it need not take a huge amount of extra time. It can also be made to take a huge amount of time if not organised.
That was the context of the thread.
- Because of the extra time and effort in processing the cheque
- Because of needing to confirm that the payment has cleared
- Because as Ed says, it may well be an indicator that the customer is going to be a PITA in other ways. For a business that is not mainly dependent on availability of man hours, this may not matter very much. For one that is, it is a major consideration if there is a work backlog and steady flow of business.
It isn't arrogant.
It's in the interest of both the supplier and the consumer not to use archaic methods of payments like cheques.
Utility companies such as BT are quite reasonably saying that customers can pay in other ways than DD if they want to but that there will be a charge. This is simply because they know that they will need to chase a proportion of those customers for the payments and there is a cost associated with that.
Another way to think about it is that customers who choose to save themselves and the supplier the potential cost of collection can receive a discount.
These are just different views of the same discussion and are completely reasonable.
The customer may choose to go for the non DD method of payment and incur the £4.50 BT charge. For high users, it may be interesting to keep the money in the account and pay BT at the very last minute. However, this is a different discussion.
There are additional steps in processing cheques.
That depends on the volume, the type of business and the mix of payments.
If I am receiving predominantly credit card payments or BACS payments in my business and cheques are in the minority (as they should be), then this is all extra work.
The same is true for the consumer.
If I pay for something by DD and there is a mistake, it is reversed out and the money appears on my account. The same is true for a credit card payment.
If I receive a cheque, it's a PITA. I have to go to the town, find a parking space, pay for it and spend time waiting in a queue to pay in a silly bit of paper. There's no value to anybody in that apart from to whoever is operating the car park. To the bank it's a cost because it involves having premises and the staff in them.
Do your bit for the ecosystem. Don't order that replacement cheque book. Fewer trees chopped down. Less fuel used to move them around. You know it makes sense.
How bizarre. Do you have some sort of antiquated bank?
At least 15 years ago I rememeber seeing banks offer automated deposit machines, so no queue. And I've never had to find a parking space and pay for it to go to the bank, but that could be because I choose where I live and how I travel to avoid such hassles. Helps with post offices too :-)
Nowadays most of our cheques get posted - freepost envelopes provided by the bank.
clive
No more than any other.
Using one of those is not a smat move. They simply give a receipt that an envelope was deposited. Who's to say what's inside? It gets lost or there's a mix up and the first you know is that money hasn't appeared in teh account many days later. Then you have to pursue the issue with the bank and ask the drawer of the cheque to put a stop on it and issue a new payment. Hopefully by this time, he will have set up a BACS arrangement and won't use paper payment again.
Don't get me started on Post Offices. I could drive further and park ouside a bank directly, but that's even more time. To be honest, I am not going to select place of residence based on being convenient for a bank that I use perhaps once a year and a Post Office that I use little more than that.
What a PITA
One still has to write and post the stupid things. I can do a BACS transfer in 20 seconds at the most - a minute (once off) if it's a new payee.
Not at the Nationwide - it scans the cheque, and gives you a picture of it on your receipt.
Mike
I wouldn't dream of dealing with an ex-building society bank. I've tried 2 or 3 at various times and found them dreadful.
The Nationwide is quite definitely still a building society, and has made considerable efforts to ensure it stays that way. I don't think many of the ex-building societies are still around, except as brand names of the banks that bought them. As it happens I don't have any accounts with banks (former building societies or not), but do have accounts with three building societies and National Savings.
Mike
I agree.
However, the Nationwide does not fall into that category.
Oh dear.
Last time I went into one of those, they were still in the mindset that they are doing their customers a favour by agreeing to do business with them. There was a queue almost out of the door while the cashiers nattered about goodness knows what with each customer - didn't have anything to do with financial transactions as far as I could tell.
Fortunately, these outdated organisations are in steady decline to oblivion.
I am a happy Nationwide customer. This is the only national true mutual BSoc left. When all my cards were stolen this was the most effective, helpful and quickest organization to deal with. [Abbey was the worst needing to send out the passcodes three times].
I can move all the money around internal accounts in seconds.
They do not have much in common with C19 building societies except that it's mutual and they pay higher interest rate.
It is interesting to note the route by which I became a Nationwide customer:
In order to have an account with a trading name Nat West charge a three digit sum, based on transaction volume. So I opened a "treasurers' account" with the Nationwide. Thus I could pay in cheques made out to my trading name. I asked NatWest to do the same when they refused I moved my account to the Nationwide to simplify the clearance of such cheques. This is a classic example of the inflexibility of the bank losing a customer of 30 years.
To be fair Nationwide lost a Charity account because they did not give me an adequate explanation as to why they paid four times more interest on personal deposits as opposed to 'corporate' deposits. I pointed out that the transaction pattern of the Charity was very similar to a personal savings account and not a business. Not even head office were able to give me a good enough answer.
My local pharmacist - the only one in the village and it does a LOT of business
- still has signs on the tills saying "cash or cheques only". As the driving force of this business seems to be getting the last penny of profit out of every transaction it would seem that they have a different view of the economics involved than you do. Perhaps you can come and have a chat with them?
(OT - my local Jewson still hasn't caught up with chip 'n pin.)
The message from Bob Martin contains these words:
And include my NHS dentist as well.
The practice I visit has prominent signs saying they only take credit cards for private work. I haven't thought to ask if they take debit cards instead of cheques as I have used cash for the last few years.
I still write the occasional cheque. The only remotely regular transactions though are monthly to milkman and newsagent.
This can be risky. If they give you a discount for paying by DD then you may lose this. A relative of mine had this kind of problem with BT. When he refused to pay the extra they cut his phone off.
M.
IME you worry unnecessarily.
Bank, post office, shops, station - lots of things. Wouldn't necessarily have occurred to us before, but we know if there ever needs to be a next time. You missed the other bit, which is suitable mode of transport - I don't have parking worries...
No, we're talking about when we get cheques from people - hence your comment "If I receive a cheque" and my "envelopes provided by the bank". Posting isn't a PITA - post boxes aren't really that rare.
clive
There's probably no hope. Until people understand that time has an associated cost in many ways, they are not going to see the point.
I don't worry at all. I just avoid being involved with cheques if it can be avoided.
I don't have parking worries either. I avoid using places where parking is a pain if at all possible.
There's no need for the use of cheques at all, so the issue is as equally true for sending as well as receiving payment. I don't write cheques to send to people unless there is absolutely no alternative. I will choose a different supplier if one won't accept EFT in some form. Equally, I see no reason for somebody sending me money to waste my time and theirs by sending bits of paper. It isn't necessary.
Do they still exist?
I cancelled newspaper delivery for that reason. This was after a discussion that I would be perfectly happy to pay them by BACS. They said that a lot of their customers had been asking for that and some were cancelling or moving their business elsewhere. One would have thought that this might have been a wake up call, but no.
That newsagent is no longer and the shop is selling something else.
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