If a cheque I paid someone for goods was banked, on a Saturday morning in one of the main name banks in the UK, when should it have cleared by enabling the goods to be sent?
I am trying to find why the goods have not been received,
Thanks, Mick.
Have you tried asking the person who was supposed to send them?
According to how the banks say that the system works, it would be the following Wednesday or Thursday. They claim three working days for cheque clearance. However, Saturday is not really a working day and IIRC, business from it goes into Monday's business for counting and processing purposes.
This of course is a total rip off. The money disappears from your account immediately but does not appear on the recipient's account until the three days are up. In the meantime, the bank makes margin on it.
I hardly use cheques at all and in general avoid dealing with people who insist on them. It's much easier and cheaper to do a BACS transfer, and most people will accept payments this way. I guess I use 1-2 cheques a year, where there is no alternative. Even so, there is still a bank rip off, and the money still takes three working days to be "cleared". This is an even bigger rip-off, because of course it is really done in seconds.
In general, it is much better to pay by credit card, even if you don't want to run a credit card balance (which is unwise anyway). If you are spending over £100 on a UK transaction, it gives you protection with the supplier, in that the card company is on the hook if there are issues with supply or product. I've also used it as a price negotiating point. Ask the supplier if they accept credit card. If they do, ask for a 3% discount for non-CC payment, or 6% if they take Amex. It's surprising how many will go for this.
It also depends on who you have your bank account with. If it's one of the clearing banks (lloyds, Barclays, RBS, BOS, or HSBC), then it's 3 working days. Any of the other, will first have to send the cheque to the clearing bank (allow another 2-3 days), then wait for it to clear (3 days), then wait for the funds to be sent back to them (2-3 days).
Pay> >
In message , Mick wrote
In my experience, at least 5 working days. Taking weekends into account the recipient of the cheque may not see it cleared until the Monday, 9 days after you paid.
There is no longer any irrevocable cheque clearance date. This came up on Radio 4's Moneybox a few months back. If the funds on which the cheque was drawn turn out to be stolen, fraudulent, laundered, or whatever, you can find the cheque being bounced 6 months later, and people have. This makes cheques pretty useless nowadays.
Threee clear business days, unless thay pay the 10 quid special processing fee.
Rick
Saturday is also not a working day as far as cheque clearance (and a lot of other banking business) is concerned
There are sound reasons for the money disappearing from your account immediately and not appearing (well at least for a day or two) in the recipient's account. It's to do with the risk of a fraudster writing multiple cheques when they've only got enough funds to cover one and the time it takes to get the physical cheque from the recipient's branch to your branch.
The fact that it makes a bit of money for the bank is nice for them but doesn't cover the cost of processing the cheque.
Which bank do you use ? I've never had an electronic payment (from one clearing bank to another) result in anything but a credit to the recipient on the same day as the money disappears from my account.
Agreed
Cheers,
John
Those *were* sound reasons... but now the banks are reserving the right to repudiate a cheque at any later time, even after it has been "cleared".
That means the banks still get the interest, but now they bear none of the risk either; while the customer suffers the delay in cash-flow and now bears all of the risk. The banks shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.
OTOH personal customers no longer pay for cheque clearing services and, in fact, get the convenience of using all the banking services for free.
It's "swings and roundabouts" really,
Cheers,
John
Depends on the bank and the circumstances. Barclays does same day between its own accounts. However, they have recently had to add delays in some cases because of increasing electronic banking fraud. IIRC, this is typically triggered by transfers into accounts which are not known to be routinely used for payments. The object is to prevent transfered money becoming quickly untracable (e.g. being cashed) before the transfer can be investigated and found to be fraudulent. Again, this was covered on Radio 4's Money Programme a month or two back.
As far as i'm aware, banks are not open on a saturday? So I would imagine they would put it in on Monday and have a clearence between 3 to 7 working days.
You can payin to LloydsTSB on a Saturday.
Dave
Not in my town you cant, and I am with Lloyds TSB.
On 07 Aug 2005, Mick wrote
AIUI, the usual system is that it would be logged in to their account by the bank on Monday (the first available banking day); travel overnight to the Bankers' Clearing House and be dealt with on Tuesday; be sent for clearance to your bank on Wednesday; and fully confirmed by his bank as not having bounced on Thursday.
(That is, if your bank had bounced the cheque, the BCH would have been notified by the Wednesday night transfer, and the bounce would have been registered by his bank on Thursday.)
In message , John Anderton wrote
An electronic payment from a Royal Bank of Scotland account to any other bank takes at least 3 working days for the funds to appear in the receiving account.
The money leaves the account the second that the transfer button is pressed.
I have accounts with four banks (NatWest, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds) and movement between any of them has this effect.
This may be true, but the first "processing day" is Monday.
Same as if you pay in after 3:30, its processed the next working day.
Rick
Even then, it won't be processed until the Monday.
It seems to me total madness that a bank can clear a cheque - their job after all to make sure it's not a forgery, etc, then take back the money at a later date. Their recovery of any loss should be from the person who issued the cheque.
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