Check washing is when thieves steal checks that have already been filled out, and wash them of their ink so they can be rewritten.
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I bet I haven't written 5 checks in the past 5 years and the last one, I fucked up.
I had some dental work done back in March and not having insurance, it was all on me. When it was done I wrote my dentist a check for $2400 because I don't know what the limit is on my debit card.
A few days later I'm checking my balance online and saw a check written for 24 bucks. Huh? I didn't write a check for 24 dollars. I got an image of the check and bigger than shit, it was to my dentist. When I wrote it out, I did the numerical deal as $2400 instead of $2400.00 and neither her receptionist nor bank caught it when the check was deposited.
I called my dentist and told her there had been a mistake on the billing and told her what I had done. We laughed and laughed..... then I went down and paid her $2376 for the balance, this time in cash to make sure I didn't fuck it up again.
I've gone down for a couple follow-up visits since. Normally payment is required as you leave the office if you don't have insurance, but now they just send me a bill because as Lynn put it, "We know you're honest, honey", then I just swing by the office next time I'm in town and pay her off with my debit card.
Writing checks are still much safer than debit or credit.
ReplyDeleteI've been in finance for over 20 years.
I agree.
DeleteDitto!
DeleteI write about one or two checks a year for memberships mostly.
ReplyDeleteBank screwed up. Words over numbers, so if you wrote "Two Thousand Four Hundred and xx Dollars" that what the bank should have gone with.
ReplyDeleteDon't carry the check book anymore. But there are bills we pay by check. I don't buy checks very often now. Who would've thought that heavy, clunky credit card machine that used the carbon paper and the multi page form would wind up replaced by a credit card with a chip in it that you can just hold it near a machine that reads your card?
ReplyDeleteIf a chip is small enough to fit inside the end of a credit card, it's small enough to go in your hand.
There has been talk of having a chip the size of a grain of rice inserted under the skin of your hand so that you can pay for stuff by waving it like a jedi. Having yourself microchipped like one of your pets, what could possibly go wrong?
DeleteWhy would anyone carry a card that gives whoever is holding the card direct access to their bank account?
ReplyDeleteOne reason checks are safer is that no one uses them any more so the younger crooks don't know the scamming tricks. Kind of like how a manual transmission is the best anti-theft device for a car.
ReplyDeleteStill do. Some bills I can pay by credit card and there is the option of setting up automatic payment, but for me, there's no way on God's green earth I'll let a 3rd party have direct access to my bank accounts. That said, I cold see a day coming when payment by check will no longer be accepted.
ReplyDeleteChecks are as old fasion as using wampum. I use Bitcoin.
ReplyDeleteI don't pay with checks and I recall using them maybe only once or twice in my life and they were pre-filled. Certified checks have a place when moving bigger bucks though without knowing how much something will cost.
ReplyDeleteIn business, most people pay me with PayPal (yeah, I know, evil corporation.) but check, silver (Insured mail), and crypto are also options and customers discounts to cover expenses on physical payment methods / insurance. So far, one person is interested in paying in silver bullion but I don't offer the best cuts yet.
- Arc
I know that I am likely one of those types called conspiracy theorists, but I have been looking out for the chips in our bodies. I am a Christian, and really believe that the Bible teaches about the mark of the Beast being a real thing, and I think that an implant in your hand with all of your information on it, to be able to make a purchase, is very much what is being spoken about.
ReplyDeleteI do use both a debit card and pay bills by having them taken out of my account. But I watch my account very closely, or rather my wife does. Nothing gets by her, and she catches any disputed charge, and has one pending right now.
I have a separate account that has our internet bill taken out of it. It is an account that I have had since we got married, so for over 30 years now. I have around 1500$ in it, but if I ever use it, for any reason, I get an email, telling me what and for how much.
My wife has an account that she has her name on, that is my daughter's, with my daughters name on it. My daughter is partially disabled, with an autoimmune disease and only one eye, due to this disease, called vasculitis. So my wife is responsible for helping my daughter maintain her finances. She has a debit card also. But neither of us write checks on those accounts. I remember we used to write checks, then the stores would just have you sign them, and they would print the rest out for you. Now they have gotten away from check altogether. The more "progress" they make, the greater the chance of someone stealing information, which they then use to rob people. Who wants to bet that eventually it will come back full circle, to writing checks?
I use checks a lot, for paying monthly bills, repair bills, and such, though many places no longer accept checks. We have been slowly shifting to "envelope" budgeting, which means that a good deal of what I don't pay for with checks I pay for with cash. I still use credit cards for larger online purchases, and I make use of places like privacy.com to create disposable debit cards that I use once or twice and destroy.
ReplyDeleteThis latter bit with the disposable debit cards is great. I use it for most of my recurring "automatic" payments, such as streaming services like Roku, Starz, etc. When I don't want the service any more, along with cancelling it, I cancel the card. I also use it for online "free trial" subscriptions that will start charging if you don't cancel and require a credit card. I create the card on privacy.com, provide the number, and then as soon as I'm signed up, I close the card. I've found that some of these "free trial" things actually charge the card just a couple of weeks in rather than at the end of the trial month; destroying the card stops that.
Who writes checks any more? The blue haired lady in front of me at the grocery store, right after handing the clerk a thousand coupons and arguing about which are valid and not.
ReplyDelete"Writing checks are still much safer than debit or credit." - Maybe. Electronic transactions are at least encrypted. And when you use a check at a store, they hit your account with an EFT, just like your card. After that, there's a piece of paper floating around with your account number, name, probably phone, and ID written on it. A group I volunteer with issued a check to a charity. It was 'washed', and they tried to use it to buy a car from some unlucky fool that took a check from a charity for his car. Luckily the bank caught it. We only caught it because we saw the withdrawal followed by a credit.
No dental insurance? Perish forbid; you know I can help you out there, right?
ReplyDeleteYep, had to write a check when the well pump went out. It was like the hardest thing to remember how to write it.
ReplyDeleteI used to buy stored value cards from the local bank. Then I'd activate them and use them for specific items, knowing that if someone hacked the account there wouldn't be that much money to steal from the leftover scraps. Then the bank stopped selling these, and couldn't give a coherent answer as to why they stopped selling them.
ReplyDeleteI think the only thing I've used a check for in the past 10 years was to set an automatic withdrawl up, and the last time I had to do that I was able to just do it online. I'm thinking I should just shred the checks I still have, safer to be rid of them.
ReplyDeleteI do know that there are people who still do all of their banking at an ATM. It's fun as ever getting stuck behind such a person for 10 minutes.
"he said he was paying through mail to avoid online fees, but says now it’s not worth it"
I don't understand this statement. If you're paying fees to do banking online, you REALLY need to find a better bank. Or is no fee banking not an American thing?