Stores not accepting old notes?

Sharon87

I've refused them when I was working at shops. I'm surprised they are still some about. 7 years ago they stopped those notes and brought it the other notes. So they accept the new £5 notes, they don't accept the notes with the same design that the £50 notes still are.

UK2010

jonnyd281 wrote: »

That note has been withdrawn and ceased to be legal tender in 2003.
The link below is to the Bank of England website, it has all sorts of information about current and withdrawn notes.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/denom_guide/index.htm

I'm amazed to see in 2010 people have tried to pay with these, let alone then start a thread complaining when they can't!!!

thespiderspeed

jonnyd281 wrote: »

That note has been withdrawn and ceased to be legal tender in 2003.
The link below is to the Bank of England website, it has all sorts of information about current and withdrawn notes.

novagirl wrote: »

That would be why then... the current five pound notes have Elizabeth Fry on the back.
Shops shouldn't be accepted th 'old' George Stephenson notes. You can swap it for a current fiver at a bank.

If you look at the Bank of England website Jonnyd281 posted, you may have to return it to the Bank of England and not your local bank/ post office. It appears that banks, etc will only take them for several months not years after the withdrawn date.

Also might be best to warn everyone that the current £20 with Sir Edward Elgar is to be withdrawn from circulation this year on 30th June. The new one has Adam Smith on the back.

CelticSam wrote: »

If it's good enough for another shop to hand it out to me.. then. Yeah.

Sounds like you have been done by the shop who give you it, guess they don't want the hassle of getting it changed.

pendulum

We went for a carvery last week and my dad insisted on paying with two £5 coins.
Yes, coins!
Although intended as souvenirs they are legal tender to settle a debt and as a coin dealer he knows this, nobody else does though, including the manager who ended up calling the police. We've just had some vouchers through from head office as an apology

sharpy2010

pendulum wrote: »

We went for a carvery last week and my dad insisted on paying with two £5 coins.
Yes, coins!
Although intended as souvenirs they are legal tender to settle a debt and as a coin dealer he knows this, nobody else does though, including the manager who ended up calling the police. We've just had some vouchers through from head office as an apology

Why not just pay with notes and avoid the hassle?

quietishone

pendulum wrote: »

We went for a carvery last week and my dad insisted on paying with two £5 coins.
Yes, coins!
Although intended as souvenirs they are legal tender to settle a debt and as a coin dealer he knows this, nobody else does though, including the manager who ended up calling the police. We've just had some vouchers through from head office as an apology

They are legal tender but that does not mean that a shop has to accept them. To quote from the Roal mint website-

Each new crown issue is authorised by Royal Proclamation, as required by the Coinage Act of 1971. A crown therefore has legal tender status, but since it is not a circulation coin, most retailers will refuse to accept it. In recognition, however, that some people may wish to exchange a crown piece given or purchased as a souvenir, post offices have agreed to accept crowns in exchange for goods and services.

link is here -

http://www.royalmint.com/Corporate/facts/coins/FivePoundCoin.aspx

pendulum

quietishone wrote: »

They are legal tender but that does not mean that a shop has to accept them.

I have already stated that the coins were used to settle a debt. The shop and carvery examples are not comparable because in a shop a sale can be refused for any reason, and then the sale will not take place - but in a carvery you have already eaten thus built up a debt, so you must pay that debt off to the waitress at the end. You are entitled to use legal tender to pay off a debt.

If you had to pay for your carvery before you ordered it, then you would be right, they could refuse the payment if they wanted to and you'd go hungry.

Once we attempted to pay with legal tender and they refused, we could have left our names and addresses and walked out at that point. No crime there.

sharpy2010 wrote: »

Why not just pay with notes and avoid the hassle?

Where's the fun in that?
Arguments about legal tender are always amusing.

rsykes2000

pendulum wrote: »

Where's the fun in that?
Arguments about legal tender are always amusing.

Except when police end up being called and the argumentative one ends up looking like a pernickety !!!!!!

pendulum

For what its worth we didn't raise our voices once or take it seriously. It was the manager who looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel because he did genuinely think we were trying it on.

All we did was reply calmly to the statements his raised voice was making. Some things he said were "This is like paying with monopoly money, there's no £5 coin", "If you don't pay with proper money I'll get the police here and have you arrested", and "Don't try it on with me".

He totally lost sight of the fact we were actually paying customers and from a customer service point of view his behaviour was terrible. The regional manager investigated and admitted to us in writing that his behaviour wasn't appropriate and that he made a mistake in how he dealt with the situation, hence the generous amount of vouchers.

Somehow I don't think it's us thats ended up looking like a !!!!!!. He had to back down in front of everyone and accept the £5 coins in the end, after the police came, took one look at it and left without hardly saying a word. Then he's had a complaint against him which went in our favour. And he got the worst of the argument in front of his staff and customers.

It made our day tbh.

pendulum

Well, first thing's first, you seem to like an argument yourself judging by your angry response to me, so pot calling kettle black, huh ses6jwg?

This is the consumer rights section of MSE in case you needed reminding. Where consumers are encouraged to know their rights and assert them. We knew our rights and calmly asserted them and then, after receiving such terrible customer service, complained about it to achieve a good result. I'm happy about how we dealt with this problem arising and its outcome.

If anything's taught me to stick up for my rights, its been the people on this board since I started visiting it. If you hate to hear about a consumer rights success story, then maybe you are in the wrong place?