Cheques gone missing

plymgary

Hi everyone,

I have a small problem i was hoping someone could help with? On 04/08 I paid 9 cheques and one postal order into my bank for £160. It has appeared on my statement. On 07/08 the £160 was debited from my account.

I have telephoned the bank and they told me that the cheque might have bounced. Mind you, people in call centres will tell you anything to get you off the phone! I said this wasn't possible as all 9 cheques were paid by different people and so would not bounce.

They've told me that the cheques were posted back to me on 08/08. Surprise Surprise - Nothing has turned up! Now where do I stand with this if the cheques are lost? Is it not the banks responsibility to ensure they arrive safely back with me?

If they are lost, do you think threatening them with a claim in the small claims court would have any effect?

Cheers,

Gary :-)

amandathepanda

Did they say why they were sent back to you?

plymgary

HI Amanda,

Apparently they don't have a reason on their systems! Two people from the bank have told me that!!

John_in_the_city

Hi Gary,

a couple of things. You paid in on the 4th August (saturday) and the 9 items were reversed on the tuesday. There is not enough time to go through the clearing system so "bouncing" is highly unlikely.

Was there any discrepancy in the account details; i.e. payee name and account name different?

If the cheques have bounced they will have details on their RD (Refer to Drawer) system as they have to electronically notify that the cheques are being returned. And they will also have a track of why they returned them to you if for any other reason! So, call your bank and ask to be put through to a manager in their "Cheque Clearing Operations" and keep asking until you get an answer. The manager should be able to pull up the reason for the returns very quickly.

Good luck.

soolin

I'm really just echoing what the others have said. Returning something on the 2nd working day rather suggests something wrong with the payee or the account and not with the individual cheques.It is too early for them to bounce for insufficinet funds and it also seems highly improbable that all the cheques had problems. The fact that a postal order was amongst them backs this theory up..could it be something simple like they are made out to you in a different name to the one you use on your bank account, or to you jointly with another person when the account is in single names?

As for what to do if they were lost..they might just be caught up in the backlog of mail left from the recent strikes, but it does seem rather a long delay notwithstanding that. I know they sometimes sit around for a while but I would be slightly concerned. The last cheque that was returned to me was bounced after being stopped by the issuing bank for an error on day 7, and got back to me about 5 working days later.

As for 'fault' I'm sure that somewhere in the system there will be small print to say that banks are not liable for items of no value that have been lost in the post..so I'm not sure what small claims would do as depending on why the cheques were returned they could be deemed 'worthless' or at best replaceable. If they have been returned due to an error in the way they are made out then you can't use them anyway, all you can do is get replacements from the issuers.

Really though you need to know why they have been returned, call the bank again and ask them to look into this for you, surely they must keep records of letters going out and reason codes why cheques were refused.