to be annoyed by banks saying I don't need a cheque booik any more?

[camicaze]

What IS all this about cheques being abolished and surely its unreasonable? Is it just me that still gets through quite a few cheques? School dinners, nursery fees, Brownie subs, clubs, party deposits - the list is endless.
I am particularly annoyed at how slow my bank are to replace a used cheque book as if I need to be eduacated that debit cards exist...

ONline payments (I do accept them) are a nightmare to administrate. Paretns tell you they have paid but it doesn't go through becasue they really mean I am going to pay tomorrow and forget. Or they put the wrong reference on or forget to put a reference on so you don;t know who the payment is for. Or they don;t tell youthey are paying and you chase them because I don;t have time to check my online account every single day.

Grrrrr!

yes, very annoying!
I do paypal for my shop's website, but it means i have to pay paypal a commission, which is more than it costs me to accept the same payment on my card terminal, but i can't use my card terminal for internet transactions because my website is on a programme that only uses paypal.

I never had a cheque book until I came to England. I know you can get them from Australian banks but you must ask for one.
Everything and I mean everything is done by card. I find it amazing that people still pay things by cheque.

Exactly nickelbabe. PArents pay me termly on the whole (some do monthly) and I am closed December, April and through July & August. I will have to pay 12 months rental for what is essentially about 3 months useage of the equipment.

I'm treasurer at pre-school. I discussed this with our bank last week, as I was concerned about what we were going to do when cheques are phased out. The woman I spoke with at NatWest was certain it wouldn't be a problem for a long time yet and I shouldn't worry about it. Perhaps I should though...

I hardly use cheques - except for things like veg box, after-school clubs, Guides (trips & camps not subs).

But for those kinds of things cheques are ideal - the kind of small organisitions where the admin is sometimes a bit crap (with the best will in the world, they are often run by lovely people who are just overstretched) & it's really handy to have proof you've paid so they can sort their accounts out. The other option is usually just cash & a receipt, and that can easily go wrong or get muddled up.

exactly, Psammyad - it's so easy to keep track of cheque payments coming in.

YANBU my childrens school doesnt take payment for school dinners online (the old one did) and there is just NO WAY I am sending that much cash in with a child to school same goes for their trips and their other things.. Cheque it is

I also pay for clubs by Cheque unless I can phone up and use a debit card then I do at times but when they want payment on the day it is a cheque not cash I use

"I got a letter recently telling me that cheque guarantee cards were being withdrawn from sometime next year"

Yes, but that's only the guarantee scheme. There's a real nervousness about people being able to write 25 x £250 = £6250 worth of cheques, more if they've stockpiled a spare chequebook, without anything to stop them. The guarantee scheme doesn't apply in scenarios like children taking cheques into school for dinner money or trips, as in order to be guaranteed, the payee of the cheque has to see the signature being signed and compare it with the card. Small traders are welcome to continue taking cheques, and there's no firm date for the withdrawal of cheques themselves: however, they do so at their risk, which might give them an incentive to deal with debit cards.

We pay my children's music teachers online; one we pay in blocks, the other week by week. We transfer odds and ends of money to and from family members online. We pay for school meals online. I think we now get through perhaps one cheque a month. On my sole name account, I recently got a nice letter saying they didn't mind me crossing out 19__ to write in a date in this century, but would I please stop using Lloyds' cheques as they became LloydsTSB in 1995, so I guess that's about one cheque per year!

"I am told (can't get a mobile signal at my venue) that the signal for chip and pin machines are different than for mobile phones and they will work even in the remotest of areas."

Tell that to the staff at the restaurant we were at recently - close to the centre of Bracknell, hardly the middle of nowhere - where they had to wave the chip and pin machine around near the ceiling for it to connect....

I think there are different types of machine, some of which require constant mobile network access and others which don't.

I have a Visa debit card that I cannot use in certain situations (such as those DIY petrol pumps - I have to go up to the counter to pay) as the transaction doesn't happen in real time - the data is (I assume) stored and then processed later on.

There has to be a workaround for all this though.

I'm genuinely bemused that some posters can use one or two cheques a year. Before children, yes, but once my eldest hit about 3 I seemed to need a new cheque book really regularly. Do you just go and get cash out for things like Brownies and isn't finding change a pain?
I do wish dd2's school used online payment for dinner money. However, I don't want to sound like a luddite, but its actually quicker to write a cheque than start up the computer, go through endless screens and then put in lots of numbers. Having said that nearly all the times I write cheques there is no other option than cash.
Also it sounds prohibitively expensive for very small organisations to get a machine or hideously complicated to organise transfers.
It just strikes me reading these posts that ending/discouraging cheques is more about the banks wanting small organisations to pay them more money than about ease or convenience for customers. Also that parents will be particularly hit both in terms of convenience and rising costs of kids activities etc having to be passed on.

Most stuff here done by bank transfer

we don't have a cheque book. it is sometimes annoying, and means we have to pay in cash for all sorts of annoying things (like cubs fees, school trips and nursery deposits).

usually its fine, as you can pay for pretty much everything with visa or bank transfer.

I've written 10 cheques totalling approx £250 in the last month for schools (x3) for preschool fees, dinners, locker keys, trips out etc and guides.

I don't want to be carrying this much cash around or trusting my children with it in school.

Don't worry, camicaze, there's no end date for cheques so you can continue to use them for at least another ten years. The cheque guarantee scheme is ending, but that's much less significant in the scenarios you're describing.

"I've written 10 cheques totalling approx £250 in the last month for schools (x3) for preschool fees, dinners, locker keys, trips out etc and guides."

But many schools are moving to ParentPay or similar online systems. Each year that goes by, yet more will.

We moved to Luxembourg a year ago and were amazed to find that they don't have chequebooks (in fact when my FIL told me I thought he was joking!).

But actually it works fine and you just pay everything online - just have to get used to paying once you receive the bill rather than on the spot for things like doctor's consultations, although you can often by by card as well.

"hideously complicated to organise transfers. "

Just nipping off shortly to take my daughter for a piano lesson. If the woman who teaches her has managed to figure out the hideously complicated means that she asks for people to pay her, of course.

Seriously, what is it about money and a refusal to change anything? It's like every time they change a note there's a chorus of "what about the old folk?" If a business cannot figure out how to take payment other than cash or cheques, then I'm sure there'll be another business offering a similar service that can. Remember when M&S refused to take credit cards? They had endless reasons why it was impossible for them to do it, until suddenly they found that people were voting with their feet, at which point all those incredibly complex and difficult reasons evaporated like dew on a warm morning. And amusingly, they've stopped taking cheques now, in a complete reversal. We pay the piano teacher online. We pay the music theory teacher online. They're one-man-band businesses, so if they can do it, so can everyone else.

I love my cheque book - it is the only way I have of buying anything off ebay in the UK, and of sending my nieces birthday presents that I can afford the postage of!

Paypal is EVIL and loathsome and I will never ever get involved with it again (and in fact can't due to various bank/country issues) so the cheques are invaluable to me. Thankfully my bank doesn't seem to have dispensed with the idea just yet (although I do understand that they're due to be phased out by 2020)

Not everything can be done online - and because I haven't used the facility for a while, my bank have just withdrawn my ability to do personal bank transfers (i.e. to a friend or family) unless I phone them, no easy feat from this country.

"Paypal is EVIL and loathsome and I will never ever get involved with it again"

Why? Seems to work for me. I switched to authenticating with the little one-time-password jobby on my phone in a spate of paranoia, but what's not to like?

pleased for you tokyo.
Doesn't work for me and I really can't be doing with going into all the gory details of why not.

I'm a fan of online banking but when we changed accounts recently DH said no to a cheque book. Not a problem until he picked up a speeding ticket and the only payment options were cheque, postal order or cash - I spent £6 on a £60 postal order. Staggered that an organisation like this can't be arsed to bring itself up to date by offering card payments

I like cheques - particularly as our nephews live miles away and as the are in their teens it's a lot easier to send them a cheque than get them a book or something they won't really want.
I also use them to pay for school stuff and wotnot.

I can't get by without a chequebook but that's no slight on me - but the people I am dealing with who seem to expect you to be able to write one.

Lots of tradesman I deal with dont even know what an online payment is! They certainly would have to specifically dig out their bank details which of course they could but they dont know them off the top of their head. They dont appear on their invoices.

Its also awkward - a tradesman who has finished a job and wants paying, either has to leave the premises without being paid and hope you do an electronic payment fairly soon, or hover over you whilst you do it there and then! Whereas a cheque is being paid, he can leave the premises. Okay, so he might end up with a bad debt anyway if your cheque bounces, but at least a transaction of sorts has taken place.

You're right, its handy also for all those school and preschool bits and bobs. Cash is all very well but they seldom supply you with a receipt at the time, and they never have change and its always some silly little amount.

Paying bills I generally do electronically or by direct debit but there is the odd random one where it takes a lot more time and effort doing an electronic payment than scibbling out a cheque and chucking it in the post.

I agree however that paying at the supermarket with one, only to then get your chip and pin debit card out to guarantee it, is ridiculous and should be scrapped! (and has)