£10 for cancelling cheque, say its Lost but how can I?

jinkssick

I basically want to cancel a cheque, its £10 at the LLoyds TSB to do so. Its free if it is lost but how can I say that I have lost it when Ive already sent it for it to be cashed (and it hasnt been)?

ajaxgeezer

Please tell me that you haven't written a cheque to pay someone and now want to cancel payment? Sorry if I've misunderstood but this is how it comes across.

LittleVoice

Is it lost? No it isn't according to what you say. Charge for stopping a cheque (other than lost) is £10. Value of cheque £10.

Why do you want to cancel it?
Does the person actually have a right to the money?
If they do, then if you stopped the cheque you would still owe them £10. If they don't, it will still have cost you £10 and put you to the trouble of cancelling - or telling a lie.

jinkssick

Its from an ISA I wanted to open, sent cheque, 1k to be precise. now I dont want to open that ISA and I want to cancel cheque.

jonesMUFCforever

You can easily say that the cheque is lost. If it is presented the bank will return it unpaid - end of story.
I often tell customers to say that cheque is lost to save them £10 as long as they are pleasant and have all the details to hand. It makes my job easier.

What happens regarding the ISA I'm not completely sure. If you have opened one and deposited £1k into it then you may not be able to open another this tax year.
Speak to the ISA provider and hope that you have a cooling off period!

MarkyMarkD

Regarding the ISA, I am not convinced that stopping the cheque will work. Most cash ISAs don't have a cooling-off period, so this will quite possibly be reported to HMRC as an ISA you have subscribed to in this tax year and then closed.

That's also the way that account records show a bounced cheque, when I've paid a bouncing cheque into a building society account in the past (i.e. deposit shows, then a reversal when the cheque bounces).

I don't personally understand why banks charge nothing for a "lost" cheque which needs to be bounced, and £10 (or whatever) for any other cheque you need to bounce. It just encourages people to deceive their banks, and even their staff to tell customers to do so. Silly.

I don't know whether you applied to open the ISA by post or in a branch; if it's by post it would be VERY worthwhile to phone them and ask them to remove your application from processing before it's too late. If it's via a branch, then you obviously can't do that UNLESS they send all the ISA account opening documentation off to some central location where the accounts are actually set up, in which case there might still be a chance to stop it.

Stopping the cheque is definitely the WRONG way to go about this.

jonesMUFCforever

Thanks for the info Mark.

I wasn't sure what the position was regarding the ISA.
Perhaps he would be better off opening the ISA and not stopping the cheque and just make a withdrawal of whatever he needs or even arranging to transfer the ISA to a provider he does want!

I also agree about your comments about the stop cheque fee. I think it's there so that customers don't come in and stop a lot of cheques if they find that they do not have the funds to meet them for free rather than get charged for them to be bounced! (those without cheque guarantee numbers of course)

MarkyMarkD

I think I meant the point the other way around - it shouldn't be free to stop a "lost" cheque, rather than it SHOULD be free to stop any cheque.

You are absolutely right - the correct thing to do is to let the ISA open and then transfer it to where you really want the money. The only circumstance where it would make any sense to cancel the first one is if you suddenly need the money now but will be able to fully fund your ISA later in the tax year, or (I suppose) if the place you want the money to go won't accept transfers in.

But the difference in interest we are going to be talking about on £1,000 is pretty small beer.