Fraudulant card use

[Andy Y]

Not strictly true , the banks would return a cheque if the account was closed and aslo if there were no funds in the account. The system was better but not infalable

 

Not true if it was within the guarantee limits and the relevant details were correctly recorded.

[RobR]

Not true if it was within the guarantee limits and the relevant details were correctly recorded.

And were recorded by the payee. If the hand writing of the card details was the same as that on the rest of the cheque we might return it as it didn't comply with the terms and conditions of the scheme. The other part of the terms and conditions we could use to return cheques was 'up to the limit of the card in a single transaction'. In other words if for an item over the guarantee limit more than one cheque was issued, and accepted by the vendor, the bank could pay only one cheque, and bounce the others. If we received consecutively numbered cheques on the same day to the same payee with the same date it was a fair bet that was what had happened. If the payee subsequently denied it then we paid up, but sometimes they didn't, so we saved the bank some money.

Of course we only looked for a guarantee number if there was a problem with the account . 99.90 per cent of the cheques went straight through. At the branch I worked at we used to get about 2000 chegues in daily- it was unusual to consider returning more than six for lack of funds.

As you say, it was costing the banks money. The payee was supposed to see the cheque signed, and the make sure it matched that on the card. When we recovered a stolen card quite often the signatures didn't match. So the payee wasn't doing their part.