CheckFilter

February 16, 2008 4:57 PM

Can a store refuse a check (British cheque) that has been folded (you folded it to fit into your wallet)?

Should the cash register reject a check that has been folded?

This happened to me at a thrift store with a rather old cash register, greatly to my embarrassment and to the irritation of the clerk and the people behind me. The transaction was eventually canceled and I paid for the item with cash, after the clerk allowed me to visit the ATM down the block.

I usually fold my checks and I have never had this happen before. I'm thinking of carrying them unfolded from now on.

posted by bad grammar to Shopping (15 answers total)

A store can refuse a check for whatever reason they feel like, generally speaking.

Should they? I assume the check was not in the checkbook, and that is sometimes seen as a sign of potential fraud.
posted by grouse at 5:15 PM on February 16, 2008

As I understand it, the store is legally allowed to reject any kind of payment it dislikes. (This may include even legal tender under some circumstances.) "Should" is a different question. You were prepared to go to the cash machine so the store didn't lose any money. But it does seem like a somewhat arbitrary rule - and one I have not come across elsewhere.

On preview: the fraud point grouse makes is a good one.
posted by TrashyRambo at 5:21 PM on February 16, 2008

Can they? yes

Should they? Up to them.
posted by edgeways at 5:36 PM on February 16, 2008

Did they try running it through a machine to verify it? I used to work at a Longs that did that, and the machine could be finicky.
posted by cschneid at 6:29 PM on February 16, 2008

I say they shouldn't have refused it. I mean, the fraud-theory is plausible prima facie, but loses plausibility when one realizes that not all people should be expected to carry an entire chequebook around just so they can write the occasional cheque. Perhaps the "rather old cash register" was an indirect indicator that said business/employee disfavour or are unaware that most people prefer more modern means of purchasing.
posted by astrochimp at 6:59 PM on February 16, 2008

I'd say it's not very good customer relations, but if they want to reject cheques for some arbitrary reason (they don't like the design, the account number begins with 8, you used green ink) then there's probably nothing that prevents them from doing so.
posted by winston at 7:15 PM on February 16, 2008

I've worked retail for 25 years or so, off and on, and can't say I've ever worked in a store that even accepted cheques.
posted by dobbs at 8:10 PM on February 16, 2008

dobbs: Could it be because you're Canadian? Here is Australia I also think that a retail clerk would die of shock if someone wanted to pay with a check (you use either cash, or some form of electronic payment here), but it seems common in the states (at least, based on the movies!), possibly because they don't seem to have the kind of universal debit/credit card (EFTPOS) system we have in other places (happy to be corrected on this point, BTW)
posted by ranglin at 10:14 PM on February 16, 2008

Paying by check is not common in the States in my experience, with some exception for grocery stores. And by the States, I mean New York City. We don't have the same system for EFTPOS as other countries, but we do have a fully developed debtit/credit system. It's just that our debit cards don't always require a PIN. As a slight aside, the fee structure for debit transactions in the U.S. are such that the banks receive higher fees from merchants for sales in which the cardholder signs a receipt (say, 2% of the total transaction) versus those in which the cardholder enters a PIN (say 50 cents). Because of this incentive, the banks don't distribute the same EFTPOS machines in the U.S. as they do in other countries, where presumably the fees are structured differently.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 11:49 PM on February 16, 2008

Should the cash register reject a check that has been folded?

I take it you mean the thing that the money goes in? Yes, it's possible. Folding the paper can make it difficult for the optical reader inside the till to read the numbers correctly.

If it physically wouldn't fit, or something, then I have no idea. I figure that all cheques would be the same size (I can't see the benefit to changing the size).

Point of interest, a folded cheque sometimes has to be read by a person rather than a machine at the bank, for the above reason. That could be why it was refused.
posted by Solomon at 12:31 AM on February 17, 2008

Did you produce or were you asked to produce a cheque guarantee card?

In my experience as long as you're under your bank's guarantee card you don't have a problem. When I first moved to the UK cheques were a lot more commonly used than they are now, but even so it seems every bank makes a point of mentioning their checque guarantee card in marketing literature.

For some, no doubt customer service oriented reason, my local council can't accept SWITCH payment but a cheque is fine. Every now and then I'll get asked to produce the guarantee card.

Tower Hamlets PLEASE stop deactivating my direct debit mandates! This has been going on for over seven years now!!!
posted by Mutant at 1:51 AM on February 17, 2008

Though it's increasingly difficult in the UK to use cheques at all - it might be that. Certainly all the supermarkets are phasing them out this year. It's Chip and Pin all the way.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 6:25 AM on February 17, 2008

Thrift stores, being thrift stores, see checks bounce all the time, so they have extra rules to avoid being burned by kiters.
posted by breezeway at 7:57 AM on February 17, 2008

If I understand you correctly, it wasn't the cashier who turned your check down, but the register itself.

Checks are very fragile things, thanks to the magnetic ink & special font used in the printing.

At the bottom of the check are your bank routing numbers (which identify the bank and the state/area the bank is in), your account numbers (which identify... well... you), and the check number (which identi... you know where this is going.) These are printed in magnetic ink and in a special font. A Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) device in the register reads the numbers on the check and verifies that they're real. (Learn more over here.)

But, as I said, a check is fragile... anything can keep the MICR reader from reading your check properly. Folding a check could have caused a crease in one of the numbers or one could be scuffed from brushing against your credit card. It may just be a badly printed check. Heck, it possibly has nothing to do with a problem with the check itself... the most common reason for the characters to go unrecognized is that person writing the check got a little overzealous with their signature and wrote through part of the numbers at the bottom, causing the read to fail.

You can think of it as similar to a dollar bill reader in a vending machine, as they work in a very similar fashion. A dirty, creased, rumpled dollar bill is going to get kicked back by the bill acceptor. The dirtier & older a check reader or bill acceptor is, the more likely it is that it will kick back legitimate funds as fakes.
posted by aristan at 6:14 PM on February 17, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestions. . . I will keep my checks flat from now on, and I certainly don't intend to buy anything with a check in a store in future, unless I know that the stores take them without trouble (some bookstores do).

I have sworn off credit card use, and don't carry one, which is why this situation arose.
posted by bad grammar at 4:38 PM on February 18, 2008