banking

[llizzie]

Do you still use cheques? Have you ever known a case where the payee - recipient - on the cheque is able to present the cheque for payment twice?

They shouldn't be able to present it twice as they cheque should be taken off them when they pay it in to the account.

The bank takes the cheque from them. The only time it would go through twice is if it wasn't honoured the first time (insufficient funds maybe) and is re-presented for payment. In that case the cheque would show as being paid in, coming back out again and then being paid in again

Banks don't see all the cheques now you can bank them via an app do they?

Might be possible to ebank and actually bank but I'd assume the bank of the payer would realise and cancel one.

Surely the bank would not accept two cheques from the same account, with the same cheque number?

The banks don't always take the cheques. I banned my last four using the app, so I've got the hard copies.

I'd imagine that it may credit temporarily and then be removed from the receivers balance again when it was flagged up that the same cheque number had been cashed twice.

If the cheque wasn't paid in at a bank, ie done via mobile banking, there is a chance the cheque could be presented for a 2nd time as it won't have been kept by the bank but it will never be honoured, that's what the cheque clearing cycle is for.

caughtinanet: can you tell me more about this please?

sparklytwinklyfairylights Sun 07-Apr-19 18:03:07
If the cheque wasn't paid in at a bank, ie done via mobile banking, there is a chance the cheque could be presented for a 2nd time as it won't have been kept by the bank but it will never be honoured, that's what the cheque clearing cycle is for.

In this case it does not help to know the second time did not succeed but I do really want to know if it has happened to anyone else.

dementedpixie:
that is definitely not the case in this instance. They were paid the first time.

Was it you that wrote the cheque and someone else paid it into their account?

So, I take a photo of the cheque and “bank” it via my phone banking app then at the same time physically hand the cheque in at the bank it could be credited to my account twice BUT later on in the process it would become apparent that there was a duplicate deposit and one would be reversed.

This is hypothetical only, I don't know at what stage it would be discovered that there was a duplicate.

Has someone “banked” your cheque twice?

The bank the cheque is drawn on will only honour it once, even if someone tries to present it once. I accidentally banked a cheque twice recently (got an error on the app, banked it in branch the same day and then the next day it was showing as having worked via the app after all so showed as deposited twice). I rang the bank and they said don’t worry it will sort itself out. I was returned a copy of the cheque with a cheque not honoured letter, so it was only drawn on once. It sorted it out by itself, and pretty quickly, within about a couple of days.

@llizzie if this did happen to anyone it would be really easy to rectify as there is only one cheque.

The clearing cycle would pick this up and if it didn't, which would be extremely rare, all that needs to happen is for the person who wrote the check to speak to their bank, they'd see the cheque debited had the same serial no as the previous cheque and would then debit the recipients account accordingly.

If the person who wrote the cheque had incurred fees/charges these would be refunded

sparklytwinklyfairylights the clearing cycle did pick it up. They sent me a letter saying the cheque was stopped and not saying why, though they used the word duplicate. I knew I had only written one cheque out. I spent two hours on the phone with the bank yesterday until the finally told me that it was the second presentation they stopped, so in fact the cheque was honoured, so although they described the cheque number, amount and account and said it was stopped, it was actually paid and only the second transaction for the same cheque was stopped. If they had not written the letter I would not have panicked thinking someone had cleared out the account! How could a bank write and say they stopped a cheque when in fact it was honoured? How can they do that without saying in the letter?
Is it a genuine mistake of a clerk or was it a deliberate act of fraud?I should know the answer to that so that I do not write them another cheque. Only two people demand payment by cheque. Everyone else is happy with paypal. The bank offered compensation and I said it wasn't good enough I would ask the ombudsman for advice, so they rang me back today and increased it, and asked me to stop the complaint. I accepted because I was exhausted and I could not face yet another phone call from them, but I am not happy about it. It should not be possible.

I’m massively confused.

You wrote a cheque. The cheque was presented and paid to the recipient. The cheque was somehow presented again by accident, the ban’k stopped it, you suffered no harm or loss yet they have offered you compensation twice?

I don’t understand either. It sounds to me like the bank did what it was supposed to. What was the compensation actually for, given that there was no loss?

Maybe they had to notify you in case money had started coming out of your account already?

So if the clearing cycle picked it up and it only came out your account once then what is your problem?? Your issue should be with the person who tried to pay it in twice (although they could have done that accidentally I suppose)

Im confused too. By the ops update , the 2nd presentation was picked up at clearing. If the cheque was presented over the counter the teller would have absolutely no way of knowing the cheque had already been presented, hence the need for the cheque clearing cycle.

I'm really not sure what the Ombudsman will be able to do given there wasn't a back error and the bank have offered compensation, again for what I don't know, but good luck pursing that Avenue.

Banks make mistakes just like everyone else sometimes.

Your explanation isn't clear at all, it sounds like the resolution procedures worked properly, might you be slightly over-reacting?

When they introduced the digital banking of cheques, there must have been something in the system to stop people photographing the cheque and sending it to multiple banks as it's such an obvious method of obtaining money fraudulently, but I don't know what it is.

I see about one cheque every few years, and none at all since I heard about paying cheques in electronically, so don't know how it actually works.