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...

actually that last bit wasn't aimed at you - it was aimed at the poster above (whose name I couldn't see without scrolling up ) who listed a whole load of things which she said people obviously didn't do/need if they didn't have a cheque book

Fluffles - can you not just give the details for the bank to the parents so they can pay you direct into there??

Like most posters I find cheques useful for the following.
School trips, swimming lessons, guitar lessons, after schoool club and other similar things.
Oh and tradesmen too.
basically anything where you can't use a debit/credit card but you want to have a proper record of the transaction.

YANBU

Well that's alright then!

If people didn't keep asking for cheques I wouldn't keep using them. But school asks for payment by cheque (every other day it seems ) plus cash is not traceable and I like to have my payments trackable due to past bitter experience.

Plus we booked a campsite in August, tiny little place that wouldn't have merited a credit card machine, and they wanted a cheque. How else do you send payment by post? Oh - postal order. Which costs a quid apiece.

YANBU - i use them all the time - while DH never does, and can't believe how archaic i am. but how else to deal with
school meals
school extra just about everything
the fish man in his van
my continuing education fees
etc etc etc
as kitbit says - if people weren't constantly hassling me for cheques, i would happily burn my cheque book!

I also use cheques a lot. I use them for:
school dinners
milkman
cleaner
music lessons
work on the house (builders, furniture etc)
school trips
etc etc.
I can't imagine how this will work when cheques are phased out - yet another example of capitalism not responding to consumers - who will this benefit? only the banks.

Yes and increasingly you have to pay extra to pay by card, so I guess we will all end up paying more.

I run an incorporated charity and am lucky enough to have a free banking facility. We recieve over 100 cheques each week as well as cash payments for the services we provide.

We've looked at having a chip and pin system, but taking into account the cost of the equipment and the associated fees it would cost us about 50p per transaction, which we'd have to pass on to our users.

We looked at direct payments, but the problem with that is we'd need online banking (as discussed above this is a problem for charities and why we also need to pay our own bills by cheque due to needing a minimum of 2 signatures). We also don't have an 'accounts department' to track all of these payments each week (it's just me trying to keep on top of the book keeping along with everything else ).

So, although I do most of my personal banking online I really do appreciate that it's not so simple for certain organisations to pay for and keep on top of electronic payments.

Also, I think that many people forget that in big shops/supermarkets etc we are all paying for the option to pay by card. On the receipt there is often a statement about accepting that 3% of the amount paid is a fee for using a card. But you pay the same amount for your shopping even if you pay by cash.

We use them quite a lot - for paying school subs, pony club, swimming lessons, horse show entries etc. Anything which involves posting "money" off when we can't use cash and they don't take credit cards.

Even our quite big PR company doesn't do credit card payments yet - mostly down to the cost of having the equipment and the fact that we don't have many costumers and they tend to pay us by bank transfer. I can see we'll have to have a credit card facility soon though - annoying as it is to give them some of our money!

We use Paypal for buying and selling on Ebay and love it - so easy and we don't mind paying for that service.

I so hope they don't abolish cheques. I don't use them often but they are handy. School trips etc. I think though its more of a problem for older people. My mum has always used building society accounts. Now her building society won't issue cheques for less than £1,000.00. Not much use if you want to send bithday money to the grandchildren. I have now suggested she opens a bank account but surprise surprise she is not entitled to a cheque book!

I pay the veg man and the school dinners with cheques.

Cheques are still useful, and it is easier than paying online tbh.

I paid my builder online - had to have my purse near me to log in (cos need account details from my debit card), have to use a bloomin' awkward calculatory type thing, have to type things into that, things into the website - I'd rather just write a cheque! Less faffy and less likely to make a silly typo that sends the money who knows where.

Good point about birthdays - DD's building society account would be penniless if it wasn't for cheques in birthday cards!

MaMoTTaT i can't even begin to imagine the nightmare trying to persuade parents to remember to pay online. it's hard enough when their child has to come with it in their hands. also, permission forms will still have to physically come to meetings so then we have to go home, register with online banking and go through the account matching payments and permission slips and chasing up those parents missing one or the other. at least with cheques they come back with the permission slip and stay stapled to it till we do the bank run.

TidyBush - what I did when treasurer of a small national charity was to get trustee approval in advance for any online payments over £100, plus set up all trustees with view-only access to the bank accounts. Meant I could keep track of money coming in, and we still had a measure of control. You have to have a board who works closely together though (and who actually bother to check and reply to emails - my personal bugbear).

We were lucky in that the mem and arts were drafted fairly loosely, so we didn't need anything other than Board agreement (it's a charity limited by members guarantee, and getting enough member votes to change anything is a bloody nightmare!)

It's not ideal though, and has meant a few tricky discussions with the accountants...

I work in a bank and I am constantly amazed by how many people use cheques so much! I like most others on here use cheques if I need to pay for school lunch, the window cleaner (tho' sure he must curse me!)

However, if someone wanted to open a bond with the bank it HAS to be in cash or cheque - funnily not many people have £10k+ in cash on them........ so, as banks have a long way to go to adjust what should us mortals do?

I love my chequebook - and know a lot of tradespeople we use that still love cheques too. Both our plumber and electrician say that whenever they get paid by online transfer it's always late. And I don't know how my gran's going to cope when they get phased out. Anyone know how they've decided to help non phone/internet bank users on this?

I still use cheques to pay for:

The window cleaner, ballet classes, Beavers subs and music classes, pre-school fees, some school trips.

I would pay them all over the phone/on-line but so far, none of them are providing bank details to allow me to do so. DS's school dinners are, however, now paid online and it is so much easier.

Someone was mentioning hiring a chip and pin machine for a small business. Personally, I wouldn't. I'd recommend something like Paypal's Virtual Terminal. You can take UK credit/debit card payments using it. They charge £20 per month plus a percentage of each transaction. Put up your prices to cover the costs.

logging in and paying online takes seconds - ok maybe 2 minutes

especially if it's someone you've previously made a payment to.

I'm impressed at all these organise parents that remember not only to take the slip and the cheque to the group, but also take them at the same time stapled together!

I know they don't do it at school either.

The secretary there has a very simple list for permission/payment slips.

Child's name - 2 boxes to tick - 1 to say the permission slip is back, 1 to say the payment is made - as the two frequently come separately especially for things that we're told about well in advance.

Parent pays online with childs name as reference. Don't even need the permisssion slip to "match" to the payment - just tick the sheet.

And online banking doesn't exactly take long to set up either if you've already got a bank account.

I really do think some people are making a mountain out of what will (when it finally happens) a tiny mole hill.

Some of us live pefectly normal lives and do the same (or similar) things to you - just never need a cheque book,

I use cheques a lot.

Agree they shouldn't be phased out.

YANBU there are lots of small businesses which can't afford to pay the charges for processing credit and debit cards and as you rightly say this includes schools and clubs.I wouldn't expect some poor Tawny Owl to walk around with lots of cash for a trip away or whatever, cheques still have a very useful function.
Of course there are bank transfers, but they are quite fiddly and a lot of people don't have access to the internet. There is the telephone banking option, but people probably don't want to pay for expensive phone calls to their bank to arrange said transfer, when they can write a cheque for nothing.

Do you remember when they started paying benefits (including pensions) into bank accounts instead of everyone having to queue at the post office.

There was mass hysteria - "oh what about x,y,z groups - what will they do".

Well - funnily enough the majority of them have coped just fine - yes you still get some that still go down and cash their giro - but most now have it sent to an account.

Chip and Pin - OMG what about smaller businesses and shops that can't afford the new stufff............well I've noticed more and more smaller places having chip and pin now. And of course the hysteria about how older people etc would cope with them............again - they did.

I wonder if it was the same sort of panic when electricity and light bulbs were introduced.........."omg how will older people cope have to change a light bulb instead of getting a new candle from the cupboard"

It doesn't take 2 mins if you bank with a bank that has one of those daft card reader thingies with 20 millions passwords

well I have 3 pages to get through to get onto mine

My brother has one of those card readers - I didn't notice him taking too long to log in

I agree for much older people it would be a nightmare

My granddad, who died a few weeks back, had severe macular degeneration, and was a carer for my senile dementia grandmother. He had to give up his computer when he couldnt see anymore.
He could get my grandma to steer his hand to the right place to sign cheques or get her to fill them in when she was lucid, but they just couldnt have done it on line, and as they werent that mobile expecting them to either keep tonnes of cash in house (and be prey to doorstep conartists/ thieves) or have to get them both to the bank very frequently, well it would just have been very hard

I feel it would have taken a further dignity from him unnecessarily.
Fine to say it easy, but it is a bbit discriminatory too

On a personal note, if I want to direct pay anyone I dont already have set up, I have to have a finegrprint machine connected to the machine and a card reader- and still usually have to call up. Once they are set up itys ok, but the set up takes EONS

So, no YANBU