writing chqs

IrishGypsy

Reminds me of a customer I once had who had a substanial amount less paid into her account than what was written on the cheque. Turns out she had let her young daughter write the numerical value in and her daughter accidentially placed a 'smudge' mark that looked a lot like a decimal point to both the computers and the staff who manually checked it!

Even though the writing amount clearly stated the larger amount, they obviously went with the smaller - incorrect figure - that was written on by her daughter.

crazyguy

I bet it cost more in phone calls and time complaining about the £0.83, and then to say I dont want it back, why create a big drama over it ?

I dropped a pound the other day in Tescos, but didnt rush back to make a thread over it.

leandygandy

When I worked in a bank 5 years ago the cheques were most certainly read by machine. We never input anything on the computer for cheques unless there was also cash being paid in at the same time. Cheques were stamped and placed in a basket with paying in slips, then at periods throughout the day a staff member would come downstairs and collect them for processing.

Bundles of cheques and slips would be passed through the machine, which would read the amounts on the cheques and compare to the amounts on the paying in slips, bringing this information up on the computer with electronic copies of each. The software would highlight any discrepancies, which the staff member would then dig out the cheque and slip to verify the handwritten amount and input the correct details, thus crediting the corrected amount.

Once this was complete, the cheques would be batched by bank and sent to the originating bank to go through the clearing process.

I can't explain what has happened in this specific case, and what I have put above may no longer apply, but hope it goes some way to explaining the 'computer' comments...

FullTimeBadMan

What are you actually upset about? You were offered the 83p back, despite the fact the phone call must've cost more than that...

jonesMUFCforever

I would contact the newly weds as for the transaction to balance they must have had £200.83 credited to their account.

Demand it back now!

barak

To be fair, I don't think no1fran is particularly upset about the 83p - but just wants to know what happened. It seems to me that the machine tried to read the handwritten "ØØ" and the best numeric value it could come up with was "83". If we could see the actual cheque we might be able to work out why.

anamenottaken

When I write cheques where the value is whole pounds only and no pence, I write "XX pounds only" in the words section and "XXX

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" in figures. There seems no reason to write ".00".

silly_moo

I used to work in a cheque clearing dept of a major bank. The cheques are put through a machine which reads the amounts with high accuracy. In your case it would have simply been confused by the scored zeros.
Now I write a lot of cheques at work and always make sure I put clear figures in the amount box, e.g. 200-00.

samwsmith1

anamenottaken wrote: »

When I write cheques where the value is whole pounds only and no pence, I write "XX pounds only" in the words section and "XXX

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" in figures. There seems no reason to write ".00".

I do exactly the same, I don't see why you would bother to write pence if it was a whole number.
As you said I would have written £200

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in the amount and just written it as Two Hundred Pounds Only

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seven-day-weekend

I had one written to me once which said 'Twenty Pounds and Not a Penny More'.

It was processed sccurately.