8 days to clear a cheque

Onamission_4

Hi,

Yippe last night I got a big cheque from L&G for being miss sold an endowment. Rushed to bank to day to pay in and transfer to my mortgage.

Its a royal bank cheque and I'm with the royal bank. So I queried how long it will take to clear (hoping to hear "straight away sir") "8 working days" was the responce....

Where is my money for those 8 days?

Have written letter to bank to complain

Rabbit

Hi there, congrats on getting a cheque.

I had a similar chat with the RBS about cheque clearance.

I used to work for Barclays when I left school and was intrigued to know how they reached the 8 days when we used to say 5. (In this case it included a bank holiday).

Their response was -

day 1 - chq paid in
day 2 - chq in London clearing system
day 3 - chq back to own branch
day 4 - shows on balance so can be returned if not enough funds (by 1st class post!)
day 5 - chq returned or not by this date so an answer should be given BUT now apparently as the Royal Mail can't be trusted to get the post there the next day any more, the banks are allowing extra days for the post to be delivered. Hence going up to 8 days. By then they reckon they are almost certain it will be cleared.

I asked the question "when is the cheque actually cleared with no comeback whatsoever" the answer came back " well never really, it could always be returned" - god help us! I'm sure that can't happen in this day and age.

We sold some stuff on e-bay and waited from Monday am to the following Tuesday as it was bank hol (a further day to be added). No problems with bounced chqs.

They can send it first class as a 'special' and avoid the traditional clearing system but it used to cost £10. Then again, that is relying on the post but at least it will reduce the days.

I would be interested to hear if this is the correct info for other banks too.

Hope this helps.

jonesMUFCforever

Rabbit wrote:

Hi there, congrats on getting a cheque.

I had a similar chat with the RBS about cheque clearance.

I used to work for Barclays when I left school and was intrigued to know how they reached the 8 days when we used to say 5. (In this case it included a bank holiday).

Their response was -

day 1 - chq paid in
day 2 - chq in London clearing system
day 3 - chq back to own branch
day 4 - shows on balance so can be returned if not enough funds (by 1st class post!)
day 5 - chq returned or not by this date so an answer should be given BUT now apparently as the Royal Mail can't be trusted to get the post there the next day any more, the banks are allowing extra days for the post to be delivered. Hence going up to 8 days. By then they reckon they are almost certain it will be cleared.

I asked the question "when is the cheque actually cleared with no comeback whatsoever" the answer came back " well never really, it could always be returned" - god help us! I'm sure that can't happen in this day and age.

We sold some stuff on e-bay and waited from Monday am to the following Tuesday as it was bank hol (a further day to be added). No problems with bounced chqs.

They can send it first class as a 'special' and avoid the traditional clearing system but it used to cost £10. Then again, that is relying on the post but at least it will reduce the days.

I would be interested to hear if this is the correct info for other banks too.

Hope this helps.

Most of the above is accurate. However now, cheque clearance for most banks is done centrally ie cheques are not returned to each individual branch but are held in a central place and the same for returned cheques. Banks send every returned cheque to one address for that bank and this is normally done by the overnight courier - therefore cutting out the Royal Mail But in my experience the RM beat the courier hands down every time.

Onamission_4

thanks guys... I was more just anoyed than anything. Its taken since just after xmas to complain and get a settlement. The endowment company offered and I accepted, it then took 6 weeks of calls to eventually get a cheque... that was after i gave them my bank details and they agreed to pay me direct. However rather than calling they wrote a letter saying they there was a problem paying direct, and they would send a cheque in the next few days... why not just post the cheque instead of writing and sending me a letter telling me they are going to post the cheque.

Anyway when I was told 8 days to clear it was 8 days too much. i then have to transfer it to my mortgage account, which I guess is another 8 days

AndyR_3

Onamission wrote:

Where is my money for those 8 days?

For most of the time, it is in Legal and General's account.

GrahamH

Rabbit wrote:

I asked the question "when is the cheque actually cleared with no comeback whatsoever" the answer came back " well never really, it could always be returned" - god help us! I'm sure that can't happen in this day and age.

It most definitely can happen and is the cause of a common scam met when selling items privately.

• Buyer offers seller full asking price of goods or more.
• Buyer pays with Bankers Draft
• Seller believes this is too good to be true, totally secure and releases goods.
• A few days or weeks later the Bankers Draft is returned unpaid - the account has been emptied in the time between the bank creating the draft and the seller presenting it.
• Buyer can no longer be traced.
• Seller is left with no goods and no money.
• Banks wash their hands of the problem.

Caveat Vendor too!

Can also be done with cheques, although more tricky as few sellers will release high value goods against an un-cleared cheque

AndyR_3

GrahamH wrote:

[*]A few days or weeks later the Bankers Draft is returned unpaid - the account has been emptied in the time between the bank creating the draft and the seller presenting it.

Sorry, but this is not quite correct - a Banker's Draft is drawn on the bank, so if the account was emptied, it would mean the bank had no money left. The scam works exactly as described except that the draft is returned because it is a forgery or stolen.

A bankers draft cannot be returned due to lack of funds otherwise you could sue the bank it was drawn on.

virgin_moneysaver

unfortunately cheque fraud is big business these days, & not just privately drawn cqs but business cqs - we've even had fraudulent building society cqs - personally I wouldn't pay for special presentation, the customer when paying for it is told its reliant on 1st class post & recently we posted a cq Monday lunchtime 1st class & it was delivered to the receiving bank on the Friday. The banks will differ slightly, ours is 6 working days for amounts £1000 & above - after all this time 8 days will soon pass, watch a bit of tennis, the footie final etc

As a final thought - our endowment was missold, I can clearly remember the guy giving us the figures for endowment mortgage & repayment mortgage & saying as there was less than a couple of quid between the two at least with the endowment we'd have a nice lump sum at the end (NOT!) - because it was taken out in April 87 we are outside of the time frame now covered by the Ombudsman, Standard Life don't want to know because of this & said to take it up with the FA who sold it, who hasn't been in business for the last 10 years - so I'd rather be in your position in having to wait a week than mine who've still got to find the shortfall