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AIBU?

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Original poster

To tell you all to check your bank accounts very carefully!

120 replies

SeaMagic · 04/11/2015 22:26

... particularly if you deposit cheques in the automated machine thingy.

You know the one that bank staff encourage and cajole their customers to use as it means you will have less of a wait [and they do not have to employ so many actual people/counter staff].

Bloody Barclays. This has happened to me TWICE now. I usually use the counters to deposit cheques as I have previously had cheques to the value of £300 go missing and not credited to my account when I dropped them in the machine. Luckily I had a receipt and was able to prove that I had deposited the cheques... but it took Barclays forever to investigate and they were so blasé and non-apologetic Angry

Now I have found it has happened again. Against my better judgement I deposited £400 worth of cheques in the automated machine about 2 months ago. I was in a rush, the queue was immense, I thought what's the chances of my cheques going missing again? Well, it appears that they have. I have just found the receipt tucked in my diary and thought I would check my statements to ensure it has actually been paid in... to discover I can't find it anywhere on any statement. Ring telephone banking, chap on the other end also can't find it anywhere. Has passed it on to the complaint team, will take 48 hours for them to investigate apparently.

I tell the telephone banking guy I want to make a complaint. He has given me a generic Barclays address to complain to. No thanks, I want a real person, preferably someone with authority to hear my story. Does anyone know who I should take my complaint to?

I am feeling mighty pissed off but also rather concerned as some branches are now fully automated, i.e. no counter staff just machines. These sort of mistakes are completely unacceptable imo. Yes, I probably should have checked my receipt earlier but in the general busyness of life it just got overlooked. It is also possible that my receipt might have gotten lost and then I would have struggled to prove I even deposited money into the machine! I have quite a few clients who pay me via cheque and I am now wondering if I need to tell them that I no longer accept this method of payment.

So please everyone, look after your receipts for depositing cheques and also make sure your money has actually been deposited into your account!

OP posts:
Diddlydokey · 05/11/2015 06:58

Just post them. Photocopy/scan/take a photo of the cheque and paying in slip so if it goes missing you have the details.

Or use PayPal.

BalloonSlayer · 05/11/2015 07:01

I had a cheque in Australian dollars to pay in to the Co-Op and I had to find out how to pay it, send it to a special address in their foreign exchange department. When I checked my bank statement they had put it through as New Zealand dollars! (I could understand it if they had put it through as Austrian Schillings or something else near Australia on a drop-down list but it's as if someone thought, "Australia . . . New Zealand . . . same thing . . . who cares?")

I rang and the guy I spoke to clearly implied it was my mistake. They would never make a mistake like that apparently. Well, it was from my sister in Australia, there was no way I was going to forget she lived in Australia and think she lived in New Zealand instead. He got the file with the utmost reluctance and grudgingly admitted that actually I had filled out the form correctly and it was their fault.

If I could have been bothered to go through the rigmarole of changing banks I would have done. I guess they rely on this.

When I wanted recently to open accounts for my teenage DCs the co-op sent me some forms to fill out which I found difficult to follow and I had a couple of questions. I rang the call centre to ask and the guy couldn't tell me as he didn't have a copy of the form to look at. Solution - book an appointment at my nearest branch and then drive an hour to it and get them to explain my question for me. When I said it was OK, I'd pass, there were other banks and I'd just open the accounts with another bank he seemed surprised and hurt. It's as if it simply doesn't occur to them that they have competitors.

Original poster
SeaMagic · 05/11/2015 07:01

Thanks for the tip President, do you know what the scheme is called officially? Or is it just called 'phone cheques deposit scheme'? I will see if I can get on it. Is it something like telephone banking for cheques? How on earth does this work, do you scan them across to Barclays?

Sorry, to hear of your family war wanna. Hope it is all resolved soon, it sounds very stressful and upsetting Flowers

OP posts:
Letustryagain · 05/11/2015 07:01

I notice some people are saying to to the OP 'well it didn't work last time so don't use it' but that's not really the point is it? The point is that yet another system that's been brought in to enable companies to reduce the number of staff and save money, doesn't work effectively and in a number of cases I'm sure, actually means that Customers are out of pocket. It's outrageous and something that needs to be fixed, but no doubt it will get added to the pile of things to be fixed and as more gets dumped on top it'll go to the bottom.

For those who have said about the amount being wrong when they put the cheque in, the Halifax machines show the cheque on the screen and the amount above it in figures and you have to confirm whether that is right. All the machines should be doing the same thing, it's crazy if they're not!

OP, I hope the latest debacle gets sorted quickly!!

kinkytoes · 05/11/2015 07:02

I hate the depersonalisation of banking - and every other type of retail too. Even at the library you can process your books on a machine. No wonder people get lonely!

I always insist on queueing to see a human being. Call me strange but I like the interaction. If we don't use the people they'll all disappear and then where will people actually work?

This is not progress in my eyes.

Original poster
SeaMagic · 05/11/2015 07:07

But Diddly if you just send the cheques in and have a photocopy of these I imagine it would still be up to you to have these cheques reissued if they were lost?

Which might be fine if you are in regular contact with the person who gave you the cheque. But if it is a client who has paid for work completed a few weeks or months ago, you may have lost contact with them and find it difficult getting the cheque reissued.

At least by having the 'official' receipt from the automated machine or counter the bank has it's own record and will have to sort the situation out and pay in the money for you [eventually]. There is no need for me to have to go back to the person who issued the original cheque.

OP posts:
SoupDragon · 05/11/2015 07:21

I love that the first two posts are blaming the OP for 1) uskng the machine Barclays provide for paying in cheques and 2) using cheques at all.

No, it's not the fault of the bank providing the "service" it's the OP for daring to expect them to do their job. Confused

EmpressKnowsWhereHerTowelIs · 05/11/2015 07:33

I don't go near the paying in boxes either. On one occasion Halifax paid my cheque into someone else's account, on another, the drawer apparently got stuck for a week (!!!) and the cheques had to just sit there. I'm perfectly happy to explain to QDs if necessary - normally quite loudly.

londonrach · 05/11/2015 07:37

Thinking of leaving barclays for this reason as i must admit it does worry me despositing cheques and i hate the pingo (yes know its the penguin but my nwme for it) system where up to £20 or £30 can be taken without a pin.

londonrach · 05/11/2015 07:38

Cheques will never be got rid of as theres nothing to replace them. The banks have admitted as such!

CrotchetQuaverMinim · 05/11/2015 07:40

We don't really have a choice but to use the machine - even the 'counter service' is now automated machines, with someone occasionally hovering around to help. You can't deposit with an actual person. (also Barclays). I have to deposit cheques often. Luckily I haven't had a problem yet, but I always wonder how good my own receipt will be as it's just a tear-off slip that I've written the total on, and I don't see how it proves anything.

The automated counter-service machines are even worse, and the staff can't always help - last year, they couldn't work out how to pay my income tax through it, as it needed me to prove who I was or something for ID purposes for that amount, and the machine couldn't do it, and they didn't have the right counter staff any longer, so I had to go to a different branch!!

SoupDragon · 05/11/2015 07:43

Cheques will never be got rid of as theres nothing to replace them

Of course they will be got rid of eventually. There are already online options that replace them and contactless payment methods could easily be expanded upon. I believe I can already use my phone to pay in some places.

Shakey15000 · 05/11/2015 07:48

It's the arrogance isn't it? The assumption that you, as the customer, are at fault. The suspicion. Banks in general should be wobbling atop their high horses. And OP I couldn't agree more that they are quick to apply charges to customers yet fanny around their end with a shruggish attitude.

Barclays refused 2 of my PPI claims when it was abundantly clear I had been mis-sold. A quick generic looking dismissal letter. A complaint to. Ombudsman sorted it and a generic again apology made.

Runningupthathill82 · 05/11/2015 07:51

Also thinking of leaving Barclays due to appalling customer service. My branch is one of the ones where there is no longer a counter, just automated machines.
Last time I was there I had a very large number of coins to pay in. Queued for a machine, got to the front, discovered I couldn't pay in so many coins at the machine.
Had to find a member of staff and wait for a second time. Was in there an hour and 10 mins in total - what a waste of a lunch break.
And then there's the times my debit card has stopped working for no apparent reason, most recently last Friday. More than 1k in the account but the card got declined four times in a row for a £50 bill - which I later discovered was a Barclays-wide issue. I didn't have another card with me to pay. Extremely embarrassing.

Artandco · 05/11/2015 07:57

I can't believe the amount of people who still use checks. I'm 30 and have never had a cheque book.
I own my own company ( for the last 8 years), and all payment is card only. 99% is now card via the Internet with the odd call to pay over the phone for whatever reason. I have never had even an enquiry to pay by cheque. Don't take cash either.

Cheques to me would be a huge pain as I wouldn't have time to bank often so they would be left and banked weeks later potentially which surely is annoying to client not knowing when money will come out.

I haven't stepped foot in a bank for about 8 months ( and that was for something completely unrelated to work)

londonrach · 05/11/2015 07:58

Soup..we have to disagree on that as ive been told by bank quietly there is nothing to replace them.

Running...ive already moved one account and it was very easy. My chosen new bank did all the leg work. No mistakes mAde and all completely within 2 weeks and i could use the cards with no problem. Im at the point of thinking of moving the final one.

ProbablyMe · 05/11/2015 08:05

I had this with Barclays in the summer. They inexplicably credited a cheque in my name to my sons account which has a different surname!

nauticant · 05/11/2015 08:16

Like CerseiHeartsJaime4ever says, if you have a problem you initially try to resolve it with the bank but if they give the brush-off you take the complaint to the Ombudsman.

SoupDragon · 05/11/2015 08:17

Cheques will not be here for ever That is a fact.

SoupDragon · 05/11/2015 08:21

I think the only place I write cheques or is DDs Brownie pack. That would be easily solved with a contactless payment machine or the facility to pay online. Simple.

Allgunsblazing · 05/11/2015 08:26

This is why I love First Direct! They're humans.

LurkingHusband · 05/11/2015 08:28

On the (thankfully) rare occasions I have a cheque to pay in, I use the in-branch machine, which reads the amount on the cheque and shows it on screen before completing the transaction. It also prints a photo of the cheque on the receipt.

This is at Nationwide.

kinkytoes · 05/11/2015 08:44

But nothing will be here for ever Soup. Strange logic.

Many small businesses and charities would go under if cheques did not exist. They simply can't afford things like contactless technology. Maybe why your dd's brownie pack still use them??

Believeitornot · 05/11/2015 08:48

I bank with smile and never had a problem with cheques - which I pay in via post. This includes ones for £10k

Artandco · 05/11/2015 08:48

Kinky - of course small businesses can afford nowadays. There's lots of online options which cost nothing (bank transfer) or small Percentage like Stripe or Paypal

If I pay for say children's swimming lessons I just go online and pay on their payment page, or I could call and pay direct with card. Only two options. There's always a waiting list so nobody seems to mind.