Date on Cheque query?

Tally-Ho_2

Hi,

Although I am not desperate for the cash and will just hang onto the cheque for a while, has anyone had the following problem before and how does one get around it?

Basically it was my birthday earlier this month, and yesterday I finally got around to paying into the bank the few cheques that I had received for my birthday.

One of the cheques (drawn on a UK bank account) was from my sister who now lives in the USA (and has done for a few years now). However when writing out the cheque she put the date the american way (mm/dd/yyyy) instead of the UK way (dd/mm/yyyy).

So instead of the cheque reading 11/09/2010, it read 09/11/2010. As I was paying the cheques in, I pointed it out to the cashier and tried to explain about the 'americanism'. However at that point, the cashier said he could not accept it as it appeared 'post dated'. His supervisor also confirmed it could not be paid in until the 9th November!

Now, if I had been desperate for the money, what would the situation have been?. If I had not pointed it out, no doubt it would have gone through without being noticed (message to self - keep quiet in the future). Has anyone else ever had the same problem?

I have e-mailed big sister to remind her although she now has amercian citizenship she is still a 'brit' and we do things correctly over here!!!

Tally

withabix

The date has to be in the UK (or rather GLOBAL) format, as it is a cheque presented to a UK bank, otherwise it is wrong.

Was the cheque drawn on a British bank or an American one?

Only USA, Canada, Belize, Micronesia, Palau and Philippines write the date the wrong way.....

Tally-Ho_2

withabix wrote: »

The date has to be in the UK (or rather GLOBAL) format, as it is a cheque presented to a UK bank, otherwise it is wrong.

Was the cheque drawn on a British bank or an American one?

Only USA, Canada, Belize, Micronesia, Palau and Philippines write the date the wrong way.....

Thanks,

It was on her UK account at Lloyds. I paid (or tried to pay) it into natwest.

I have just realised it is a good thing my birthday isn't on the 12th of January, or I would be waiting until the 1st of December to cash the damn thing!!

Tally

dzug1

I suspect if you hadn't pointed it out it would have gone through unnoticed

chexum

withabix wrote: »

The date has to be in the UK (or rather GLOBAL) format, as it is a cheque presented to a UK bank, otherwise it is wrong.

I don't think it's correct to say it's wrong - it just has to be unambigous. It's an instruction for a *human* anyway, not just for "The Bank". I'm fairly certain they wouldn't bat an eyelid on 2010-Oct-12. And neither should be any problem with 2010-10-13.

If you spent some time a few hundred miles away from the UK, you'll always pause for a moment when looking at numeric dates...

Otherwise, the OP's issue is usually reported in the reverse - why was a post-dated cheque accepted. The consensus is that for smaller values, they don't bother, and *usually* they don't bother at all. If there are any suspicious circumstances, they will inspect it more thoroughly, and wiggle out just as OP experienced.

Another branch (or even a different clerk) may well accept it on Monday if not told about the "weird" date...

withabix wrote: »

Only USA, Canada, Belize, Micronesia, Palau and Philippines write the date the wrong way.....

Not only them, and there's no GLOBAL way to do it, except the ISO 8601 standard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_by_country

I refrain commenting "wrong" though :A

oldwiring

What about paying in via hole in wall?:D

oldwiring

A tad OT but long ago I worked in a large London bank branch, where foreign drafts were commonly prepared. To ensure no confusion the date was written
'twentyfirstDecemberonethoudandninehundredand seventysix'. Without spaces it also prevented date falsification.

AnonymousForObviousReason

I still use the format 25-Sep-10 because when I wrote code that was the standard for Oracle.

Sometimes catch myself putting the date as 2010-09-25, this is because I append the date (and time) for different versions on files to allow for historical comparisons, and doing this gives correct order when sorted by name.