Getting 'cashback' on debit cards 90s/00s if you didn't have money in account

[SafeMouse]

Please settle argument/check I'm not going mad.
I remember late 90s/early 00s -and being very financially irresponsible- that you could get cash from a transaction on your debit card. E.g. you'd buy chewing gum for 30p and get £30 cash which you had to sign fir on the receipt. The best bit was for some reason you could get the cash even of you had no money in your account because there was a time delay on it processing.
Friends same age not only do not remember this, but a bank working friend says it would have been impossible. But I CLEARLY remember doing it

Yes, I did this all the time with my NatWest Switch card as a student.

I also worked in the SU bar and we
cashed a lot of cheques as there was only one cash point on campus!

I did that as a student. The cash machines also used to let you withdraw money up to your limit several times, so if you had £50 in your account you could withdraw £40, and then withdraw it again. It took a couple of days to catch up.

When I ran a business around that time we used to take cheques from people on the agreement that we wouldn’t cash them for a week. It used to surprise me how some apparently well-off people didn’t have an easy cash flow. You can’t judge by appearances!

I did this a lot as a student - or cashing a cheque on a Saturday as it would take days to clear.

Feeling very nostalgic reading this thread.
I used to write cheques 2 or 3 days before payday all the time, knowing money would be in my account by the time it cleared.
When I was 18-19 I did also resort to the buy something by cheque in M&S and get a refund in cash trick.
And floor limit/bank guarantee of up to £50 on your switch card worked too.

However it worked both ways-when transferring money between my building society account and bank account it took up to 1O days to arrive, and if paying in a cheque it could take 5 days to clear depending on time of day it was paid in.

Yes, this was definitely a thing. I worked in the supermarket while at school and we would offer cash back with shopping. Also cheques took 3 days to clear. My mum would pay for the foor shop by cheque when it was end of month.

I remember a uni housemate going to 6 different tills at Asda and getting £50 cash back at each so she could pay the rent. It was already late so the landlord was coming to collect that evening, but her student loan payment was going in a couple of days later.

I got cash back only yesterday. Not for these reasons though, but because I’m staying somewhere very rural without a cash point.

I worked in a pub as a teenager and people did this all the time- early 2000s.

I also remember the Midland being the only cash point in town that dispensed £5 notes, which was very useful when I was down to my last one

Yes I remember this! But you had to be sure the money would be in the next day or 2 or you'd get charged £25 by the bank 😭

I got cashback in M&S the other day for the first time in about 15 years. The you g guy behind the till had no idea what I was talking about and an older colleague had to show him. I was quite surprised it was so uncommon as cash points are so few and far between which is the reason why i did it. I said to the member of staff afterwards that it took me straight back to the 90's!

@SafeMouse you can still do it now and yes, it was possible back then, even when debit cards first came out … was often more convenient than trying to find a cash point.

'I needed to pay the council tax but had no money. So I posted a cheque by second class post, thinking I'd have a few days by which time I'd have got paid but no, the post and the council conspired against me and the bank tried to take the money the very next day and of course it bounced and I got a bank charge and a snotty letter from the council. I think it worked the next time as I'd been paid by then, but I remember thinking that if someone was sending me a cheque by second class post, it would have been at least a week before the money was in my account, but here somehow both the post and the bank worked in record time.'

I used to work for a company with a seriously slow accounts payable dept. Half my job was telling irate people on the phone 'the cheques in the post!' (The cheque was never in the post)

You could go overdrawn at the midland bank by using the cash machine and the counter within a short time of each other.
Probably about 1988-9 as my part time job was paid in.

This used to work recently (within the last 15 years) when contactless came in. I remember it used to do it at Tesco and McDonald's that you'd pay contactless and the money would take a few days to go through so it would still approve.

Also the £1 petrol pump trick! Now they want to take £120 even if you only want £50. Life used to be a lot simpler really.

I definitely did this in the few days before the student loan dropped in, 25 years ago now.

I used to do similar with cheques when they took 7 working days to clear. The week before payday I'd go to Marks and Spencer, buy stuff and pay with cheque then take it back the next day and get refunded in cash

I used to work for M&S and i regularly did this for customers.

I used to pay for a pack of fags with a cheque for £50 and get the cash back. How the uni shop stayed in business I do not know!

Can you?? Or did I already know this but forgot? 😆

The government want a cash free society eventually, but I always carry some around myself. I had forgotten you could do ' cash back ' on transactions. I haven't asked for any in years and just use the atm.
(I might give it a go next time I'm out shopping now though !)

I used to run a bar.
People would order a drink, say round it to £20 and we would put it through the old pdq machine as £20 and give them the change.
Probably completely fraudulent in retrospect.

They don't all work this way now. I'd forgotten to top up my spending account and went to put petrol in. Card approved, but it stopped at £13, which was all it had approved me for and all I had in the account.

The joy of cheque guarantee limits ... I think mine was £100 but I never spent that much at the offy!

I think my cheque guarantee was 100 or something! People rarely write cheques these days.