Expired Cheque - Payer Refuses to Re-issue.

[Deleted User]

Jimj40 said:

To add a bit of flesh to the bare bones above: I live abroad these days and my return to my UK house was a flying visit to grab a dustbin-bag-full of post and check for damp/mice/burglars. I have just cancelled my internet service as I only kept it running on the off-chance that I might need it but it's pointless to fork out £40+ a month for a land-line that I don't want so that I can have a barely 1 meg adsl internet connection I don't use; the comment about their useless service was just blowing off 15 years of steam and is indeed immaterial to the question here.  The credit is of course no use to me as I'm well out of contract and there are no cancellation fees.  Unfortunately, the cheque and I are currently at the other end of Europe and I doubt that my UK bank would look too kindly on a 5+ year old cheque turning up in the post - in the past they turned down one that was only 6 months old (without an expiry date).

You paid for 5 years of internet service you didn't use or need, on the "off-chance" you might need it? Over £2500? Hmmmm

colsten

camelot1971 said:

Jimj40 said:

To add a bit of flesh to the bare bones above: I live abroad these days and my return to my UK house was a flying visit to grab a dustbin-bag-full of post and check for damp/mice/burglars. I have just cancelled my internet service as I only kept it running on the off-chance that I might need it but it's pointless to fork out £40+ a month for a land-line that I don't want so that I can have a barely 1 meg adsl internet connection I don't use; the comment about their useless service was just blowing off 15 years of steam and is indeed immaterial to the question here.  The credit is of course no use to me as I'm well out of contract and there are no cancellation fees.  Unfortunately, the cheque and I are currently at the other end of Europe and I doubt that my UK bank would look too kindly on a 5+ year old cheque turning up in the post - in the past they turned down one that was only 6 months old (without an expiry date).

You paid for 5 years of internet service you didn't use or need, on the "off-chance" you might need it? Over £2500? Hmmmm

And then het up over a £75 cheque. Yeah.

northwalesd

And will it be another 5 years before you can be bothered coming back to get a reissued cheque?

olbas_oil

There seems to be a lot of sentiment against the OP. But he has raised an interesting point. From  a legal perspective, does the act of issuing a cheque satisfy a debt, or is it only once payment has been received?

colsten

olbas_oil said:

There seems to be a lot of sentiment against the OP. But he has raised an interesting point. From  a legal perspective, does the act of issuing a cheque satisfy a debt, or is it only once payment has been received?

Legally, there is probably no expiry date of a debt, so the cheque can be presented at any time.

This still doesn't explain why anyone would procrastinate cashing in a £75 cheque for 6 years, whilst happily paying £500 a year for service relating to the one-off  £75 dispute.

Exactly what are the sentiments against the OP, and why do you have what issue with them, for what reasons?

Ditzy_Mitzy

olbas_oil said:

There seems to be a lot of sentiment against the OP. But he has raised an interesting point. From  a legal perspective, does the act of issuing a cheque satisfy a debt, or is it only once payment has been received?

No it doesn't - a cheque can be cancelled by the issuer at any point prior to it being cashed.  It's merely a mechanism to enable a payment, it's not actually a payment per se.

Emmia

If the OP is out of the country for so long, seemingly on a near permanent basis - would it not have been prudent to look into setting up mail redirection? it would probably have avoided this cheque being "forgotten". 
https://www.royalmail.com/personal/receiving-mail/redirection

olbas_oil

colsten said:

Exactly what are the sentiments against the OP, and why do you have what issue with them, for what reasons?

I was interested in the OP's original question ('Do they have to re-issue a cheque', which is roughly equivalent to 'was the debt settled') but subsequent responses seemed to question his behaviour and to contrast the imbalance between the cost of the unused service and the value of the debt. I was after a technical answer not a moral judgement (though I agree that the OP was the first to raise the theme of retribution for poor service).

xylophone

 https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/information-hub/faqs/cheques-and-cheque-clearing#:~:text=Is%20it%20true%20that%20cheques,t%20have%20an%20expiry%20date.
Is it true that cheques are only valid for six months?
No. A cheque is valid for as long as the debt between the two parties (i.e. the person writing the cheque and the person they give it to) exists. In other words, cheques don’t have an expiry date. However, it is common banking practice to reject cheques that are over six months old to protect the person who has written the cheque, in case the payment has been made another way or the cheque has been lost or stolen. This six-month timeframe is at the discretion of individual banks. It should not be assumed that cheques older than six months would automatically be rejected as the only definite way to cancel a cheque is for the person who wrote it to request that a stop be placed on it. If you have a cheque that you want to pay in that is more than six months old, your best course of action is to not pay it in and instead obtain a replacement from the person who gave it to you. Where there is a dispute, a cheque remains legally valid in order to provide proof of the existence of a debt for a period of six years, which is the Statute of Limitations.