LLoyds shredding business cheques instead of banking them

Thrugelmir

In the distant past who the cheque was made payable to always had to match the account name. As with many things in the past couple of decades matters became lax. Now with technology available banks are able to enforce the rules properly.

d123

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Given that cheques are often written out by punters who frankly couldn't give a toss, I don't think it's unreasonable for that to be allowed or to think that it would be.

I'd have accepted it when I worked for a bank and frankly if we hadn't then we'd have had hundreds of complaints about cheques being rejected.

A business doesn’t have to accept a cheque if it’s not made out correctly, making it prominent on the invoice “CHEQUES PAYABLE TO JOES CARS TAXI SERVICES” isn’t hard to do (when we still accepted cheques I had a stamp made that was stamped across the invoice with a similar message).

If a cheque is received with the incorrect payee simply tell the person it’s not correct, just like you would if the date or amount were wrong and ask for a correctly issued replacement.

JuicyJesus

d123 wrote: »

A business doesn’t have to accept a cheque if it’s not made out correctly, making it prominent on the invoice “CHEQUES PAYABLE TO JOES CARS TAXI SERVICES” isn’t hard to do (when we still accepted cheques I had a stamp made that was stamped across the invoice with a similar message).

It doesn't, but then if I have an account in the name "Juicy's Heating and Plumbing Services" and my customer's just written me a cheque for "Juicy's Heating" I'm not going to quibble. Particularly, and this is important, if I'm a plumber who doesn't know of and couldn't give a sh*t about the technicalities of account names. I have the benefit of having worked in a bank, taken banking exams and invested far too much time into caring about things like this. 99.999% of people haven't. They'd see "Juicy's Heating" or "Joes Taxi" as a reasonable shorthand for "Juicy's Heating and Plumbing" or "Joe's Taxi Cabs".

I'll just reiterate that if banks didn't accept cheques made out to slightly different trading names from those on the account in this way, cashiers would spend all of their time having pointless arguments and logging complaints, because nobody would consider it reasonable and people who had accepted cheques in good faith would not be able to bank them. Where does it end? Can I not have a cheque to "Mr J Jesus" paid into my account in the name of "Mr Juicy Christing Jesus" any more? Will the machines shred my cheques?

Lloyds refusing these cheques is frankly stupid to me. Shredding them so they can never be recovered is incomprehensible because it renders the situation totally unsalvageable. OP's customers will incur charges for stopping the cheques that they wrote to OP and that, as far as both they and OP were concerned, were fine. OP is out of the money that he legitimately is owed. If this is genuinely Lloyds' new policy then it's a dumb one.

The real issue overall is that it was a complete surprise. If Lloyds had made clear and publicised that cheques need to absolutely match 100% the name on the account in every way or they'll be destroyed irrevocably then that'd be one thing. Here, OP paid cheques into a machine in good faith and only discovered after the fact that Lloyds had adopted this unreasonable new policy. That makes it even more stupid. I don't know if he's raised a formal complaint yet but I hope he does and I hope they compensate him. I don't even like cheques, I want the damn things abolished, but if banks are going to insist on still offering and processing them they should at least do so in a reasonable way.

d123

JuicyJesus wrote: »

It doesn't, but then if I have an account in the name "Juicy's Heating and Plumbing Services" and my customer's just written me a cheque for "Juicy's Heating" I'm not going to quibble. Particularly, and this is important, if I'm a plumber who doesn't know of and couldn't give a sh*t about the technicalities of account names. I have the benefit of having worked in a bank, taken banking exams and invested far too much time into caring about things like this. 99.999% of people haven't. They'd see "Juicy's Heating" or "Joes Taxi" as a reasonable shorthand for "Juicy's Heating and Plumbing" or "Joe's Taxi Cabs".

I'll just reiterate that if banks didn't accept cheques made out to slightly different trading names from those on the account in this way, cashiers would spend all of their time having pointless arguments and logging complaints, because nobody would consider it reasonable and people who had accepted cheques in good faith would not be able to bank them. Where does it end? Can I not have a cheque to "Mr J Jesus" paid into my account in the name of "Mr Juicy Christing Jesus" any more? Will the machines shred my cheques?

Lloyds refusing these cheques is frankly stupid to me. Shredding them so they can never be recovered is incomprehensible because it renders the situation totally unsalvageable. OP's customers will incur charges for stopping the cheques that they wrote to OP and that, as far as both they and OP were concerned, were fine. OP is out of the money that he legitimately is owed. If this is genuinely Lloyds' new policy then it's a dumb one.

The real issue overall is that it was a complete surprise. If Lloyds had made clear and publicised that cheques need to absolutely match 100% the name on the account in every way or they'll be destroyed irrevocably then that'd be one thing. Here, OP paid cheques into a machine in good faith and only discovered after the fact that Lloyds had adopted this unreasonable new policy. That makes it even more stupid. I don't know if he's raised a formal complaint yet but I hope he does and I hope they compensate him. I don't even like cheques, I want the damn things abolished, but if banks are going to insist on still offering and processing them they should at least do so in a reasonable way.

Except the way the OP described it actually changes the name (and type) of the business.

I wouldn’t expect “Joes Cars” and Joes Cars Taxi Service” to necessarily be the same company.