h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I love getting them in the post. Please don't ban them. Also my assistants might not be impressed when I can't pay them anymore.

Yeh... Its really going to mess up a lot of people when they do away with cheques, and, as yet I've not really seen any expliantion of waht we're meant to replace them with?; Sure you can pay bills online or over the phone using a card/bank account, but when I'm needing to give someone a deposit (like I did a while back on paying the deposit for having my windows replaced), what am I meant to do?: run to the bank and draw out a couple thousand quick in used twenty pound notes?; awkward as most banks limit your daily withdrawels to about 43£500

This is really going to make awkward for my Dad too, all his customers, if they're not paying cash pay in cheques, and he's really too small a set-up with his work to set up anythign more elaborate...

Wait, what? Cheques are being banned?

YYep, at least as I understand it, that is the plan; The banks are to phase them out... Can't quite rmember what the timescale is though

Cheques can no longer be guarenteed from sometime soon I think, then no more cheques around 2013, or maybe it was 2018 I can't remember.

I'm not fussed about the guarentees, because I can use my card to buy stuff, but I don't accept cards because I can't afford the fees for the machines - my dad did trialled this once in his taxi and he didn't get enough extra work to pay for the fees he had to pay.

Apparently 'phone payments' will replace them as we all have phones. But I don't know what they are. I don't do online banking because I just don't like the idea - I tried it once years ago and got so frustrated going through security all the time, then they want specific passwords in specific formats, and the amount of people I know who say they have to write them all down, which defeats the object!

Despite being 18 my main assistant isn't really into phones and the only one he has is a work phone that I provide him with. So I still couldn't pay him over the phone.

I had a letter from my bank today, that with the sign of the prancing pony. I can't guarantee cheques with my card as of...


now.


Can't say I've used a cheque for ... pffft ... years though - possibly to pay my solicitors when I bought my current house in 2007...


But then, each to their own. I barely use cash now, let alone cheques, but that's only because I use my credit card as much as possible to build up airmiles.

But I'm not salaried, and nor are my staff. Some of my customers pay straight into the bank, (which I'm really not keen on) but not the one offs, or every now and thens.

Oh they say I can still write cheques, just not guarantee them with my card.

So not really any intrinic change in reality then.

I haven't used a cheque in a shop... probably since I moved to Austin and for several years in London before that. Cash or debit card. But they're invaluable for paying bills, so if it's just the guarantee of payment that's being done away with that shouldn't be too much of a problem, should it? If you can still send a cheque in the post, which as far as I recall doesn't require a cheque guarantee card, there's still a use for them.

As far as I know there's no such thing as a cheque guarantee card here, which is why you'll often get stuck behind someone at a supermarket checkout taking forever to write out a cheque, then have it looked over by the assistant, then the assistant has to remind the customer that they need to see their ID (ie, driving licence, despite the fact that the customer has clearly done this thousands of times before), then the DL number has to be written on the cheque and the cheque run through the till, or maybe there's a third party cheque verification company that has to be contacted (at Cheapo we could run the DL through the credit card machine and it'd automatically dial the verification company and a code would appear on the display saying yes or no), and eventually the transaction is complete.

Or they could just pay with cash or a credit card. Done, sorted, end of.

I read a piece, I think on the BBC, recently about some American credit and debit cards not working in Europe because they don't have a chip, and that some (but not all, yet) American banks are starting to chip the cards.

Good thing, I say, considering I had my debit card cloned a year or two back. Someone in Georgia went on a little spending spree, but the credit union (US version of a building society) I bank with has a system in place to catch unusual activity, which they did and blocked the card, but only after several hundred dollars of my hard-earned wedge had been handed over to Wal Mart

I got the money back, but because it was a debit card so they could easily have cleaned out my bank account, and since this happens to Americans thousands of times a day, the money that the servicing companies like VISA have to refund to people like me gets lumped onto the monthly charges of all of us.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is the only reason I have a credit card now. No-one's getting their fingers into my bank account

No I haven't used one in a shop for a long time either, a lot won't accept them any more, which is okay. I just don't think they should be stopped completely.

Cheques are just the most easy and suitable form of payment in some circumstances; I don't particularly want to see self-employed sole traders having to fork out extra money to their banks who are already robbing them blind with charges, just so the sole trader can accept some fancy payment involving a mobile phone.... : If I've got someone round, say to fix somethign in the house, and its a few hundred quid, then I'm not necessarily going to have that* much cash just on me, the small indepedant workaman won't be able to take bank card/credit card payment, becasue of the stealing theifing card companys who charge them so much for the service of being able to accept payment...
I still tend to pay for most things I can with cash, as its just easier and I'm fed up of waiting for hours and hours in a pub whilst every bluddy idiot in the place spends less than a tenner using a credit card
Also, this week in fact, I'm goign to my building society, I'll draw out about £6 K, in the form of two cheques, which I'll then take to my bank, if those* cheques are phased out, then I guess I'll just have to take a small suitcase and start drawing out such sums in cash... I'm sure the banks will love having to count out the £6 K of twenty pound notes... Seems stupid to try phase out the cheque, when there doesn't appear to be a replacement form of payment in place yet

They want to get rid of the paper I believe, it costs too much to process. I looked up phone payments, and it is all press 1 press # speak your details even if you happen to be in a public place. That's really not for me. i hate those automatic dialler menu things.

Yay! Going to keep them until at least 2016. Another few years, although I am looking into nochex for the website.

Bloke on BBC said 2 million cheques are still being written every day!