Cheque cashed but company claim no knowledge

[Ichbinstoltz]

I sent a cheque to a company with an order form, etc. by post in early October. I emailed and messaged the company through their company but didn't hear back. 4 weeks after posting the order my cheque was cashed. I still had not heard from the company. I messaged and then emailed them again and got a short email back saying they had no record of my order. I emailed them a photo of my bank statement (showing cheque cashed) and a photo of the cheque stub. I heard nothing so I rang them.

At this stage I amalmost convinced that this company is some bloke running a scam in his bedroom but I rang today and it sounded like a busy, noisy office. The woman I spoke to knew immediately about my order but said: it's a mystery! We're waiting to hear from the finance department (!) About this. We will ring you as soon as we know but at present we have no record of your order.

They have been unprofessional, i feel they are gearing up to a: "not our problem conclusion" so do I ultimately have to just write off my money or is there any recourse?

A cheque receipts itself. They will have to admit they’ve been paid.

I’m no accounting expert but if they can’t ‘assign’ the money to an order in their system does it not go into a suspense account of some sort?

You could get a forward trace on the cheque. That does cost money (£20 when I worked for a bank about a decade ago)

They've got your money. Why can't they just create a new order?

Is it a small company or a big national? If the former then surely they can check their bank receipts to see the cheque going through their account pretty quickly? Four weeks is an unacceptably long time.

But I gather they are implying that they did not receive my order therefore it was not they who cashed my cheque! They haven't said as much but all they have said is that they have no record of my name.

It's not unheard of for cheques to go missing in the post, be altered and paid into a different account. It used to be by far the most common form of fraud, less so now with most people using electronic payment methods.

Ask your bank to find out which account it went into

I would report the issue to the bank

And never use cheques again. There's a reason why banks are phasing them out.

Scam artists use sound effects of noisy offices.

Hope your situation is legit though.

They are a long established international organisation but I cannot help but feel the phone background noise was dodgy. I thought so while on the phone, it was excessively noisy. Like Dom Joly on his mobile .
Anyway I have emailed the company HQ to ask if the branch I think I am dealing with is the real deal.

We've had a cheque get separated from its order a while back and in our case, we cashed the cheque and waited for the person who sent it to get in touch. The thing is that we were expecting, indeed hoping for, their call. They didn't even need to explain the situation. The minute they said their name we knew what it was about, took their order and problem solved.

That's what's worrying me about your case. Why aren't they expecting your call? Or do so many cheques go missing there that it's not possible to keep a record of them?

Any update op?

A few years ago, DW paid our cleaner with a cheque which - despite being receipted on the paying in slip (they showed us) the bank claimed they'd "lost" and refused to credit until we wrote another one.

That's all I know, btw. I did force said incompetent bank to speak to our bank to arrange cancelling the cheque at no cost to us though. They really didn't want to do that.

There's something about the wording of what you've quoted that worries me. I can't put my finger on it but the sentence structure makes it sound - well, like a call centre somewhere on the Indian sub-continent that may or may not be a front for a large well-organised scam.

Depending on the amount of money involved it would be good practice for your bank to compensate you. We've done that before with overseas transactions.