MSE News: Old fivers must be spent or banked by next Friday

tomkitten68 wrote: »

just seen the above post re: Lloyds bank giving you the choice of exchange or deposit into your account - HSBC is the bank who said I had to deposit in my account, so why the different messages from different banks?

Because it's entirely at the banks' discretion whether they accept old notes or note, and different banks have decided different policies.

thanks for your post Westie983 - they did mention a 'paper trail' and also that over the counter could be disputed what amount I had handed over.but still not quite sure why I couldnt sign a slip at the counter to verify the amount paid over, and then the amount received back. It would also be helpful if all the major banks showed consistency with such matters as you hear (and receive) differing information depending on the particular bank.

pvt wrote: »

This is an incredible non-story.

All that happened is paper £5 notes ceased to be 'legal tender'. The definition of 'legal tender' is a very very tight and specific one, and really has little to do with what someone is willing to accept as payment.

This is a story promoted by the BoE purely to try to flush out old paper fivers and tidy up the notes in circulation.

As of today I'll be quite happy to accept an old fiver as payment, or in change. It is still worth £5.

You're right that legal tender is a much narrower term than many think but it's widely used (albeit inaccurately) in general parlance as shorthand for "what's generally acceptable by shops, etc".

As chattychappy pointed out in an earlier post, shops can always refuse any form of payment anyway - strictly speaking they can still accept the old notes but customers will be reluctant to take them in change and this resistance will ultimately be self-fulfilling, so personally I don't see this as a non-story, it's reflecting the published date after which these notes will be significantly less usable than before it, regardless of narrow legal status.

Clearly there comes a point when the likes of automated payment machines have to be adjusted to accommodate new notes (or coins) and it would be unreasonable to insist on infinite backward compatibility with old designs, so nominating a specific changeover date seems sensible to me - how would you handle the phasing out of obsolete notes?

Pincher wrote: »

Damn.

I do have an almost complete collection of 2000AD from the first ten years.

Good comics, time well spent obviously :beer:

firefox1956 wrote: »

Anybody any idea how to re flatten them ??

Holding each end tightly, scrape the outside of the fold back and forth over a sharp right-angled edge, such as a table top or such? I've not had cause to try - does it work..?