OT: Paying in a cheque by phone.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mine never arrived at all. Or rather they said the branch it had been posted to was not open under CV19

[Jethro_uk]

Pretty much it. So I had to cut the middleman out and get me to a building society. Which is when you discover that the cashpoint (because I had to go out of hours) is f***ed. And because they've been streamlining their service the next nearest to have a punt on (because you can't know in advance if it's faulty) was 10 miles and *another* parking charge away.

(With the added indignity that the braindead morons that issued the cheque did so against a specific order that is supposed to be flagged on our account not to send out cheques).

[Jethro_uk]

Yes, see my reply to TNP about faulty cashpoints/out of hours failures.

What really really really stings is a few outfits that issue cheques won't accept them anymore. (I give you Birmingham City Council).

[newshound]

Sometimes takes a couple of attempts, but we've never failed in the end.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah well. I was luckier, or more circumspect. I specifically asked them if they had paying in thingummies or counter service open and my local branch, and they said yes, and you can park for an hour in the high street if you can find a slot, which being CV19, was not so hard.

Or its a 5 minute walk from a free Waitrose car park. When I worked on the outskirts of Camtbridge I used to drive 15 miles to Newmarket to go to the bank, because it was quicker than getting to the town centre of cambridge, and no more expensive...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Would you mind if I gave it back?

[Jethro_uk]

This was long before C-19 ...

Not where my local branch is during hours (hence the out of hours visit).

If it wasn't for some organisations that can't seem to retire their chequebooks, I'd never visit a branch again.

[Jethro_uk]

I guess not. But I've been trying to get rid of them for *years*. This is the outfit that spend £2million writing it's own website that nearly 10 years on still looks like something you'd have marked as "nice try" in

1992. Meanwhile any number of sites run beautifully on FOSS content management systems.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Barclays do give details of how to pay in by post. But that costs you a stamp. I do realise I could do it for free at any branch.

[Jethro_uk]

Fuck the cost of a stamp. What happens *when* it goes missing ?

And even paying in at a branch isn't foolproof. When we used to employ a cleaner, SWMBO used to (at cleaners request, we would *mush* preferred a bank transfer) write a cheque.

One week, the cleaner - very embarrassed - asked us if we could rewrite a cheque from a few weeks ago. Turns out that despite it being receipted and stamped into her paying in book, the bank had "no record" of it, and refused to credit her account.

We cancelled the original cheque and wrote another.

If it had happened to us, directly, then it would have been a different story. But you can only advise other people so far.

But then I have a drawerful of reasons not to ever trust banks. Use, yes. Take advantage of, yes. But trust ? You're 'aving a larf.

[Chris Green]

How many have you lost? I've been posting cheques for (er, um, ???) almost 60 years and I've never had one go astray. In spite of all our moans about it the postal service is pretty reliable.

To go further (about the post) we lived in Oman from 1980 to 1987 and I used to buy quite a few things mail-order, mostly from the UK. The postal service there had a bad reputation with ex-pats so I took quite a lot of care to record every order. Nothing was ever lost, though some did take months to arrive.

[Chris Green]

The normal thing is to post cheques to the central 'clearing' address of the bank rather than to a branch.

[Andrew]

Well the CEO has to struggle by on a bare £218,000 a year.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

What indeed.

Can't say it's ever happened to me.

I don't think I'd have a problem getting a second cheque if this first one went missing.

I've still not worked out why I couldn't have had this money paid as a credit transfer. It was a partial refund of a sum paid to them in that way.

[Andrew]

But that's impossible now at Barclays, and has been for some time, and I guess the other banks are the same. If you present a cheque to be paid in now at Barclays, the paying-in book is not used or stamped.

They have a device on the counter that reads the cheque and the amount is then typed in and a printed receipt handed back to you.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've just had an Ebay 'dispute' cancelled. When goods I sent by second class large letter post arrived in Brighton. Two weeks after being posted in London. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yes - oddly Barclays seem to have changed this from a Black County address to a London West End one. The reverse of the norm.

[charles]

My bank doesn't give me that address

[Andy Burns]

Or if you use the machines, they scan the cheque(s) and OCR the values (sometimes getting many of them right) and give you a printout of the scan as the receipt, someone must then read and correct the mis-OCR'ed cheques as the amount the lands in the account is correct.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The Barclays instructions for paying in by post say to write the details of the account it is to be paid into on the back - or in an enclosed letter. I did both. ;-)