Tuesday 12 February 2008

No More Cheques

Tesco's, Booths, Sainsbury's and many other companies are no longer accepting cheques, which is bad if you are an elderly person and rely on others to do you shopping. What will you do now - give them your debt card and pin number? Yes, this is now what some people have to do if they are unable to use cheques, they have no alternative. How safe is this system? Well that depends on the honesty of the person to whom they hand their debit card and pin number.
The cheque system is slow and pron to fraud, really it has had it's day and is now obsolete we live in the twenty first century. Online banking systems are improving in the UK but they have a little way to go to catch up with other counties like New Zealand. Okay banking in NZ is no longer free which is something I am still getting over but I can buy online and pay via my online bank account and the transaction doesn't take three days, it's instant.
It was wonderful last year to buy flowers for my Mums online and not have to use a credit card and as my bank account was in NZdollars I didn't get charged any currency fee ,etc.
No more cheques for my wagers either now as my employer has set up direct payment and I recieved my first payment direct to my bank. Yeeepiiiii!! No more waiting for cheques to clear, no more worring that I will not have enough in my account to cover my direct debits because my wage for the last week has only just arrive in the post and now I have to bank it and wait for the standard three working days clearance.
Talking of this three day clearance how come it takes HSBC three days to recieve a payment to my credit card from my HSBC bank account?

2 comments:

Debt Dieter said...

I'm in Australia and I can't think of the last time I even saw a cheque! Other than a bank cheque when I recently moved house and needed to pay the bond and first months rent?

LisaClark said...

So it is now cheque free in Australia? There you go dd, even Oz is ahead of the UK but I am not surprised. I remember asking for a bank draft for NZ dollars and was told by my UK bank that it would take three days to have it issued. Two month earlier I had been able to get one in only 5 minuates in my bank in Auckland. This was about ten years ago and I never
applied for it again so would hope the system has improved.