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...

I always pay for school trips etc with cheques. The only time I paid cash they lost it and I had no proof!

My god MaMoTTaT could you BE a bit more patrionising???
Not everyone coped, and it took a lot of adjustment. Just because you are yours are ok, doesnt mean everyone else is

DreamTeam - he was lucky that the bank would accept the cheques! When my Granddad's sight went he had to jump through hoops to get someone to sign them for him (even guided to the right place he couldn't write his name legibly enough) - and that someone was his care home manager!

I don't get this "loads of cash" thing either - when I'm at my most flush I rarely have more than £10-20 in my wallet (or at home).

Those banks that have ridiculous sign in/set up for online payments need to sort their arses out

Use cheques a lot & work in a school finance office. We send out over 100 cheques/month. It is too expensive for us to pay by bacs and we need paper records for the auditors.

no - not everyone coped straight away - but they're not talking about stopping them tomorrow!

If you think back even 10yrs - the way many things were done were different, techonology was different. Go back 20yrs to when many of us were children and many of the ways that we conduct are daily lives are different from our parents - yet (the majority) of our parents coped with the changes.

There has been warning those that are still going to be around are going to be able to start learning about the other ways to do things now and not have it thrown on them.

Of course there will always be people that can't cope with the changes - for a variety of reasons - but that doesn't mean we should never phase them in. If we took that approach then we'd still be stuck back living like in the 1900's

It was the same back 4yrs ago or so when they stopped letting you use signatures to pay for stuff and you had to use Chip and pin.

There was threads after threads in chat with people up in arms.

Yet I go to the supermarket and see everyone using chip and pin.

I'm sorry if you find me patronising - I guess I just find it surprising having not been given a cheque in years, and only having used a cheque once in my life.

I should imagine that once those of us with young children are grandparents our grandchildren will look back and laugh at us for many of the ways that we conduct our finances today.

The secondary school I work at only accepts cheques or cash so if you had a child there & they were going on a quite expensive trip eg. skiing you have the choice of sending your child to school with wads of cash & trusting them to depostit it correctly or writing out a cheque. they are the only 2 options. we are looking at parentpay but only for lunch money because it it hugely expensive to receive money this way.

MaMoTTaT
Perhaps you could go and preach to all the small traders/schools/clubs etc to change the way they accept payments then. And then persuade the banks not to charge them for renting the correct equipment so that they can accept debit/credit cards.

I would love it if I could junk the cheque books, but you seem to fail to understand that currently not all payees can accept anything other than cash or cheques. There are enough posts on here that confirm this. It isn't that we want to stay with old fashioned methods of payment, but in some cases we have to.

Incidentally my MIL still goes every week to collect her pension. Why? Because she lives in the back of beyond and doesn't have access to a bank or a cash machine, not that she would know how to use one anyway.

Just going on about what happened in the past is not a valid argument. Do you work for a bank by any chance?

What do you do if you are faced by someone who doesn't accept debit/credit cards. Do you go elsewhere?

I don't think MaMoTT is preaching to anyone Bunbaker.

If faced by someone who doesn;t accept cards then I would expect them to be able to invoice me with 28 day settlement terms, and being able to wait for the cash.

Like MamoTT said, chip and pin was going to be this ALMIGHTY pita...didn't really happen did it?

Bunbaker, and please don't take this the wrong way, but your MIL doesn't know how to use a bank OR cash machine? Really? They've been around for decades...! How on earth has she managed so far? Serious question!

"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"

The school accepts online payment for everything via parentpay. Other schools can do so if they wish. They say (and my OH is on the finance committee of the governors, so I believe it to be true) that it's far cheaper and easier than dealing with cheques. This covers food, trips, lockers, everything.

The milkman I pay cash.

The cleaners I pay online.

The music lessons I pay online (two of them), and cash (the other two: that the first two do it online says there's no reason the others couldn't).

Builders I pay online.

School trips see above.

"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"

Then find a bank who aren't so stupid. The market at work.

"If you think back even 10yrs - the way many things were done were different, techonology was different. Go back 20yrs to when many of us were children and many of the ways that we conduct are daily lives are different from our parents - yet (the majority) of our parents coped with the changes. "

Exactly. As you point out, remember all the nonsense about C&P, direct payment of benefits, the abolition of uncrossed cheque books, the introduction of a/c payee only chequebooks: at every hand's turn, predictions of the end of the world. And yet it still turns. I'm just about old enough to remember decimalisation: I'm sure there were dire prognostications there too, and yet it just happened. Most of Europe switched to the Euro without problems of the sort being predicted: a complete change of coinage. Many countries don't even have cheques, and the guarantee scheme is almost uniquely British.

"What do you do if you are faced by someone who doesn't accept debit/credit cards. Do you go elsewhere?"

Yes. That's why M&S started accepting credit cards about ten years ago: too many people simply couldn't be bothered to visit a shop where you had to carry a stack of cash or a cheque book. Remember when you had to carry a cheque book everywhere?

" And then persuade the banks not to charge them for renting the correct equipment so that they can accept debit/credit cards."

Fortunately, paying cheques into business accounts if free. Oh, wait, it isn't.

Actually, another example of a major change which was predicted to cause the end of the world but didn't was the (de facto, if not always de jure) removal of the right to be paid in cash. That was going to cause the end of the world, too. Now, is there an employer left who is prepared to pay anyone, weekly or monthly paid, in cash? No, there isn't. If you're in employment, you're paid by bank transfer. End of.

YANBU. I do loads of things on-line but still write a few cheques a year.

What are elderly people going to do if they can't remember PIN numbers and don't have a computer? Walk around with £££ in their pockets, muggers delight if you ask me.

"What are elderly people going to do if they can't remember PIN numbers"

They're already starving because supermarkets no longer accept cheques. It turns out that remembering a four digit number isn't quite as hard as you think, and the people who can't are dealing with the court of protection anyway.

"and don't have a computer?"

Every day, thousands of people who do have computers retire. Every day, thousands of people who don't have computers die. How many people won't have computers in ten, twenty years (which is the planning horizon for abolishing cheques)?

There are, as it happens, problems with operating online accounts under enduring powers of attorney, and that's going to have to be sorted out. But the endless parade of things that old people can't do is extraordinarily patronising.

Valpollicella (I love the name BTW)

MIL is 81 and becoming very forgetful. She can use a bank, but has never in her life used a cash machine. Until a few years ago there was a post office in her village where she used to draw her pension out, so she had no need of a cash machine. She also has terrible eyesight and wouldn't be able to cope with reading the instructions. She manages with chip and pin in the supermarket, but it took time for her to get used to that.

She absolutely refuses to learn anything new these days. We have battles trying to teach her how to use her digital recording machine instead of the video!

"MIL is 81 and becoming very forgetful. She can use a bank, but has never in her life used a cash machine."

Cash machines have been standard issue for about thirty years. She was in her fifties when she started to refuse to use them, when she presumably wasn't forgetful. Actions have consequences. But...

"She manages with chip and pin in the supermarket, but it took time for her to get used to that."

See, she can learn when she has to.

How long should maintain backwards compatibility in our lives in order to accommodate people who, in their fifties, declined to use a common technology and now claim in their eighties that it's too late to learn now?

tokyonambu Thu 23-Sep-10 23:39:12
" And then persuade the banks not to charge them for renting the correct equipment so that they can accept debit/credit cards."

Fortunately, paying cheques into business accounts if free. Oh, wait, it isn't."

Actually it is if you are a member of the Federation of Small Businesses. Hiring a chip and pin machine is going to be very expensive for me.

OK, imagine (as is likely), that the abolition of cheques is made cost-neutral for businesses. What are the objections then?

tokyonambu

MIL didn't refuse to use a cash machine, she has never needed to use one. Why would she spend several pounds on a return trip to the nearest town to use a cash machine when she could walk down the road to get money out of the post office for nothing?

The post office only closed a couple of years ago, so now she has to catch a bus (which is free as she is an OAP) so she can go to the post office in said town.

She has also never used a computer. She thinks a mouse is what cats chase, but of course when you are 81 you will be completely up to date with modern technology.

If it was cost neutral not so many issues for me. A slight concern would be I would probably have to hire someone to take payments as I can't do that at the start of a term and run the classes. With a cheque I simply put them into a folder I carry around and deal with them later.

But for me the BIG issue is cost. I can't see my dd's ballet teacher for example paying that much a month to hire a machine.

I do find checks useful to pay for some things and to send money through post. I find it satisfying to write out a check and sign it.

I'm embarassed to say I don't even know what a BACS is.

I don't know if anyone else had said it but a chequebook with all details filled in helps us all to control our spending, helps us not to overspend, a v v easy thing to do with just using a card and losing the odd receipt.

"She has also never used a computer. She thinks a mouse is what cats chase, but of course when you are 81 you will be completely up to date with modern technology."

The woman who sits next to my OH at orchestra has just bought a computer. She's 83.

You say your mother in law is now being taught to use a digital recorder rather than a video recorder. See, she can learn to use modern technology.

Very true flowery

I am a music teacher and most of my pupils pay by cheque (term's fees in advance). I don't want to hand my bank details out so this is really the only way I can be securely paid. It must be similar for many small business people.

I hope someone decides they have to keep some sort of cheque book ....it would be one good reason I would be loyal to a bank.

Cheques are convenient for smallish payments in the same way that books are convenient for reading. They are probably very inconvenient for the service provider, who instead of pressing buttons on a nice shiny computer has to invest in paper, printing ink, employees to read handwriting, etc.........

oh dear, they are probably doomed...