Send with a Cheque...

[LowLevel]

The last time I regularly used cheques was about 10 years ago to pay my driving instructor. Since then they're quite unusual, mostly things like donations to charities or preserved railway groups. There are usually gaps of several years between them being issued.

I receive them more often though - elderly relatives for birthdays, or older friends in payment for friends and family discounted train tickets usually.

 

[theblackwatch]

Initially guarantee card's weren't issued automatically, with a £30 guarantee on a book of 25 cheques they wanted to see a little history of responsible use on the account first.

Cheque Guarantee Cards were £50 at the time I got my first cheque book. I remember as it was a pain when on the tills and someone paid by cheque when it was over £50 - our policy, which certainly didn't guarantee the cheques, was to ask the customer for a secondary form of ID. I think we used to accept a driving licence, even though back then, they had no photo on them (and mine still doesn't!). How things have changed in 30 years!

 

[najaB]

When did you last use a cheque?

Does 'never' count?

 

[Mag_seven]

"The National Lottery" still use them to pay winners, and they seem a bit out sized too.

 

[najaB]

Direct debit payments cost more than paying by cheque.

That is odd, to say the least. It costs everyone significantly less to process a direct debit than a cheque.

 

[jfollows]

I was interested by this thread ... it turns out that my last cheque was for £10 to Companies House to have my limited company struck off from the register of limited companies, dated 17 January 2018, and I note that from 18 June 2018 it's been possible to perform the process online and pay by credit card or debit card. So progress!

I used to pay my dentist by cheque because I didn't mind the small favour for him of reducing his costs - he's now joined a larger practice so I simply pay by credit card these days.

In 2013 and 2014 I wrote cheques for amounts larger than £20,000 and I would likely do the same again today if the need arose. That said, I bought a car for more than this using a debit card a few years ago, there was a bit of a kerfuffle getting the appropriate authorisation but it worked in the end.

EDIT: I note also that the online process for striking a company off the register costs £8, whereas the paper/cheque process costs £10, so it's good to see that some of the saving has been passed on. In the big scheme of things a saving of £2 for something you're not going to be doing very often isn't huge but every little counts.

 

[PeterC]

That is odd, to say the least. It costs everyone significantly less to process a direct debit than a cheque.

As treasurer for a community organisation we don't pay bank charges but services like direct debits and credit card acceptance cost.

The annoying thing is that the bank doesn't allow the mobile app or corporate cards on community accounts so I still have to go to the post office (branch closed a year ago) to pay in cheques and anything bought on line has to go through somebody's personal card and reimbursed as expenses.

 

[Tetchytyke]

When I was a trustee of a charity I signed cheques all the time. Needing two signatures for the cheque was the easiest way of approving payments, and quicker than other options.

For personal banking, it's been a good few years since I wrote a cheque. More recent for receiving them, T&W Metro still issue cheques unless you ring them up to get the Delay Repay credited to your bank card.

 

[najaB]

As treasurer for a community organisation we don't pay bank charges but services like direct debits and credit card acceptance cost.

Ah, okay. Makes (some) sense now. Though it seems that the bank could save themselves money and you time by moving to a more 21st Century model of service: electronic transactions free, fees for in-branch and paper transactions.

 

[Enthusiast]

Another thing that came to mind reading the OP was Postal Orders.
It seems these are still around and, according to wiki, popular for internet shopping.

They are also popular with the Cuban Embassy in London. If you want to travel to Cuba you need a visitors' visa which costs £38. You can apply by post and you can, if you're persuasive enough, get them to issue you one in person at their Holborn embassy (they specifically say they do not issue them to personal callers but if you butter up the receptionist there she may wangle one for you if they're not too busy, but they close at 12:30pm). However, whether you apply by post or in person, the only method of payment they accept is postal order. No cash, no cheques, no cards.

 

[Hadders]

Cheque Guarantee Cards were £50 at the time I got my first cheque book. I remember as it was a pain when on the tills and someone paid by cheque when it was over £50 - our policy, which certainly didn't guarantee the cheques, was to ask the customer for a secondary form of ID. I think we used to accept a driving licence, even though back then, they had no photo on them (and mine still doesn't!). How things have changed in 30 years!

I was a part time checkout supervisor at a large out of town supermarket when I was in the 6th form and part of my duties involved authorising cheques when they were above the £50 guarantee card limit. Most were regulars so I used to approve them 'on sight' but there were always a few tricky ones.

 

[Bald Rick]

I was a part time checkout supervisor at a large out of town supermarket when I was in the 6th form and part of my duties involved authorising cheques when they were above the £50 guarantee card limit. Most were regulars so I used to approve them 'on sight' but there were always a few tricky ones.

Wasn’t it just as simple as asking people to write two or more cheques of up to £50 until the transaction was covered? I’m sure my Dad did it this way. Or perhaps he looked dodgy.

 

[theblackwatch]

Wasn’t it just as simple as asking people to write two or more cheques of up to £50 until the transaction was covered? I’m sure my Dad did it this way. Or perhaps he looked dodgy.

From what I remember, that 'wasn't allowed' - I'm not sure if that was a 'rule' created by the supermarket chain I worked for, or if it was something stipulated by the banks.

 

[GusB]

Cheque Guarantee Cards were £50 at the time I got my first cheque book. I remember as it was a pain when on the tills and someone paid by cheque when it was over £50 - our policy, which certainly didn't guarantee the cheques, was to ask the customer for a secondary form of ID. I think we used to accept a driving licence, even though back then, they had no photo on them (and mine still doesn't!). How things have changed in 30 years!

This was certainly the case when I was on the tills at Safeway. At that time (mid 90s), most cheque guarantee cards that I saw were £100, but there were still a few with a £50 limit, which was fairly easy to exceed with a weekly shop. A few accounts had guarantee cards with a £250 limit (RBS Royalties Gold was one).

Our tills would print the cheque with the amount and payee details, but we would then have to manually write the card number on the reverse with the till number, store number and initials. Down the road at the big Co-op they used to print the cheque, swipe the guarantee card and feed it back into the printer to have the details printed on the reverse.

We used to accept travellers' cheques too, and they were an utter pain to deal with as the customer was required to have their passport with them. Don't get me started on Luncheon Vouchers...

 

[Hadders]

Wasn’t it just as simple as asking people to write two or more cheques of up to £50 until the transaction was covered? I’m sure my Dad did it this way. Or perhaps he looked dodgy.

Doing this was outside the cheque guarantee card rules although I'm not sure how they would have detected it given the number of cheques that went through the system back then. There were workarounds, although probably not legit, ne of them being to get the customer to write two cheques and date the 2nd one for the following day.

 

[PeterC]

Wasn’t it just as simple as asking people to write two or more cheques of up to £50 until the transaction was covered? I’m sure my Dad did it this way. Or perhaps he looked dodgy.

The scheme only guaranteed one cheque per payee per day.

 

[PeterC]

Doing this was outside the cheque guarantee card rules although I'm not sure how they would have detected it given the number of cheques that went through the system back then. There were workarounds, although probably not legit, ne of them being to get the customer to write two cheques and date the 2nd one for the following day.

If the customer had sufficient funds there was no problem. It only became an issue if there was an unauthorised overdraft.

In those days all cheques had to be presented at the account holding branch for payment. If there was an overdraft the day's cheques for that customer would be extracted by the manager's clerk for the manager to make a decision about bouncing them.

A bank did once bounce a cheque paid in by one of our customers purely on the grounds that scheme rules hadn't been followed. As there was no underlying irregularity reported they were told where to go. We looked after our customers in the 1970s!

The one cheque per day rule applied to cash withdrawals too and there was a special page at the back of each cheque book that the cashier had to date stamp. A branch near us once let a fraudster get hold of nine cheque books and he had a happy morning working his way down a string of East London branches.

 

[Hadders]

The one cheque per day rule applied to cash withdrawals too and there was a special page at the back of each cheque book that the cashier had to date stamp. A branch near us once let a fraudster get hold of nine cheque books and he had a happy morning working his way down a string of East London branches.

I'd forgotten about the calendar at the back. The store I used to work in cashed cheques and when we did that we had to put a cross through the relevant date and put a hole through it with a pen tip to indicate that a cheque had been cashed that day.

 

[PeterY]

In their day, cheques used to take 3 to 4 days to clear. So if you knew your wages were going into your account, you could quite safely write a cheque two or three days before payday, to avoid an overdraft.

I don't know how long now they take to clear nowadays.

I still get the occasional cheque. I know they are valid to be cashed, up to 6 months from the date on the top.

 

[Alex365Dash]

Never had to write one, to be honest (then again, I was born after the turn of the millennium)!

As for receiving a cheque, got one about two months ago from a TOC. I think I've only ever received two cheques in my lifetime!

 

[najaB]

I don't know how long now they take to clear nowadays.

Normally they clear on the fifth working day if between banks.

 

[bussnapperwm]

I still write annual cheques to my local RUG, local heritage line and sometimes when I buy a rail/bus book by post/clothes from a mail order plus size retailer.

 

[PeterC]

Never had to write one, to be honest (then again, I was born after the turn of the millennium)!

As for receiving a cheque, got one about two months ago from a TOC. I think I've only ever received two cheques in my lifetime!

I think that I got to write one for a million pounds in my first job before I ever had a chance to write one on my own account.

 

[Snow1964]

Had to write a cheque at work recently, it was something like annual return or some other documents for Companies House. The letter that came with it only gave details for a cheque to be sent. So a Government agency still expects cheques

i think it was our only payment by cheque this year, as everything is normally BACS now.

Had an investor send a cheque for £200,000 for additional shares. When I took it to bank, to pay in, cashier had to get a manager to enter an override, to allow more than 3 zeros (apparently a security feature to stop too much money being credited to our account)

 

[Killingworth]

The banks have been wanting to do away with cheques entirely for at least the last 10 years but they still survive, just.

I recall working in a bank in the early 1980s when debit cards were still unheard of. The local branch of a national department store chain would pay in over 1,000 cheques every Monday, and twice as many pre-Christmas. That was probably about the peak when cheque guarantee cards had become widely accepted. Before 1970 most cheques were still not covered by such cards and were used mostly for paying bills by post. A shop would only accept cheques from its best known customers, and even some of them bounced!

Here are statistics to show how cheque use is declining 1992-2018, average daily volume down 20% from 2017-2018 and it will have been lower again in 2019; https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/sites/default/files/chq_2018.pdf

I use an occasional cheque but have uncompleted books going back to the 1990s. I've been using internet banking since 1997.

 

[reb0118]

You've reminded me that there were differences between England and Scotland in 1961 when I needed to withdraw cash from my bank account, using the bank in Oban. I was with the Westminster Bank & accustomed to "English" usage, but the bank in Oban (of the same company) required more in the way of identification or some such - and travelling only in the UK, I was not carrying my Passport. Not quite the welcome I'd been told to expect!

I believe that passing a duff cheque in Scotland is still a much more serious matter than in England & Wales.

 

[xotGD]

This thread has made me realise that I have no idea where my cheque book is.

Several years since I used it.

 

[Cowley]

This thread has made me realise that I have no idea where my cheque book is.

Several years since I used it.

I’ve had that feeling too.
The kids could have stolen it from the drawer for all I’d know, but I don’t think they’d know what to do with it...

 

[Tom B]

My current chequebook was started in February and in that time I've written 27. These include a couple of charity donations, paying rent on a lock-up garage for the quarter, society memberships, mail-order purchases from some niche firms, and buying things from Costco, who still take them at the till.

 

[M28361M]

Normally they clear on the fifth working day if between banks.

This changed last year. Most cheques are now cleared by exchanging electronic scans of the cheques rather than the physical paper cheques having to be sent between banks, so they should clear by the end of the following working day. See https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/cheque-users/businesses/cheque-imaging/about-cheque-imaging