My bank is an absolute piece-of-shit. I could complain about many problems I’ve had but I just want to focus on one totally nonsensical, head-scratching contradiction of their policies.
I receive a check once a month, I’ve been depositing this check in my current bank for several years. Sometimes I will get the check in the mail a few days before the post-marked date written (or stamped) on the check, at times up to four days early. There have been times when my finances have been tight and I’ve needed the money ASAP, so I’ve tried taking the check into my bank to have it cashed; figuring that since I’ve been a member there for many years and it’s a check they’ve been cashing for years as well, it’d be no problem.
Well when I’ve tried this, the teller in the bank has told me, each time (I’ve tried it a few times) that “they are sorry, they cannot cash the check until the date it was written for, there is nothing they can do.” Nothing. Period. Fuck off, basically.
EXCEPT, in the exact same scenario, with a check post-marked four days later, if I were to deposit that check via the ATM, I’d have access to $200 immediately and access to all of it the very next day; which is still three days before the date written on the check. Finding this out is what compelled me to attempt cashing the check in the bank additional times and getting the same denial.
So WTF? What gives? The couple of times I’ve gone back inside the bank to attempt to cash a post-dated check after discovering the ATM-check cashing loophole and been denied at the counter, I’ve really gotten fucking irritated. It makes no fucking sense to me and the fucking people at the bank actually tell me that what I’ve told them I’ve done isn’t allowed by their bank! Um, hello! Look at your fucking records! I’ve got my money. So you DO allow check cashing of post-dated checks via the ATM. Simply denying it to my face is fucking stupid. Yet that is what is done.
A)The date on the stamp is meaningless. If you really wanted to press the issue ask them for the rule that states this, they likely can’t find it.
A.1) Carefully, you don’t get yourself in trouble though
B)Instead of getting worked up over it, just stick it in the ATM.
C)The people to raise the stink with is the check writers, I could be wrong, but I believe if anyone is breaking a law, it’s probably them. I want say what they’re doing is illegal. They’re probably doing it for their own bookkeeping since it puts these checks in a different period, internally, but then they should be waiting the extra few days to mail them out. The problem is, if they are doing this because they don’t have the funds to cover them (they’re floating the checks), that I think is illegal when you’re doing it on purpose.
But, back to the question at hand, I don’t think there’s any actual banking rule that says you can’t cash a check before the date it says. Next time, calmly, ask for a supervisor or branch manager.
This wiki article on post dated checks has links that should be a good start to find the appropriate rules and regulations to find out what you need to know.
Since banks have so many local/state/federal regulations to deal with, I don’t know if they’re allowed to have their own internal regulations though. That’s something to keep in mind. You could always use the corporate email address (so it doesn’t go to your branch) and ask them if you can deposit a post dated check and if they say yes, bring that email along with you next time.
No, there is no obligation to respect the date written on the check. It is supposed to be an indication of when the check was issued and is a recordkeeping tool for the person who issued the check, not any indication of when the check will be good. In fact, in my places writing a check that you know is not covered by funds at the time you write it is a crime.
That said, banks would prefer to not accept post-dated checks for deposit because of the hassles involved so in a live teller situation may have a policy declining them. But ATM deposits are all handled automatically and the date of the check is probably not a field used for evaluating whether to accept the deposit. The hassle of falsely rejecting checks that the computer thinks are post-dated (and difficulties of figuring that out since there are many valid ways of writing dates) probably outweighs the hassle of accepting them.
So go ahead and deposit by ATM, but also keep in mind that if the issuer was relying (incorrectly) on post-dating that it increases the chances of that check ultimately bouncing, and you having to deal with that (however your bank chooses to deal with it).
Thanks all. This check is from a well-known, well-respected (and large) business entity. The post-marking has nothing to do with a scarcity of funds, I do know that. And it’s not so much that it’s causing any great inconvenience in my life, I just don’t get it. I rarely go inside the bank anyway, this is just one more reason to avoid doing so.
There are many things to be outraged about w/r American banks, but this is not one of them.
I’ve never deposited a check in an ATM machine. Can it really read the check? Or is it on “the honor system” where you key in the amount of the check? My impression is that the ATM machine and you conspire to break a rule, and you’re annoyed that the teller won’t agree to break the same rule!
I see the argument that “a rule defeated one way, might as well be defeatable every way” but that leads to a very slippery slope. :eek:
It’s the honor system. I’ve heard of some people gaming the system that way. In the OP he said that $200 was available right away, so we’ll work with that number. Let’s say I have $50 on my debit card and need to run it for $100 tonight. I get paid tomorrow. What I’ve heard of people doing is just sticking the envelope in the ATM and punching in $200 (or more). Now they’ve got $250 in their account and they can go and spend (or withdraw) that money right now. The trick is to make sure they go to the bank tomorrow morning and deposit actual cash with an actual teller before someone empties the ATM and finds the empty envelope and debits the account for $200. If you get to the bank before the ATM is emptied, you should be in the clear. I doubt you’d ever even get a call from the bank, but even if you did it would be pretty easy to say “Yeah, later on that night I realized I put the wrong envelope in the ATM so I brought in the cash the next morning” and if you only did it once, I’m sure they wouldn’t care.
First of all, I’m not conspiring to break any rule. I’m just depositing a check and finding the balance available the next day. I am puzzled as to why the teller inside is unable to provide me with any funds from the check until the date stamped on the check.
ETA: Perhaps my OP title was a tad hyperbolic. I was going for attention-grabbing. I think I overdid it.
Yes, it can read the check. Or rather, it does its best to do so (I work in online banking for a major bank and have been involved in the design of several products (remote check deposit being the most important one) that rely on it.
That said, if the machine is uncertain of what it has seen the check image (once it has been scanned the actual paper check is hardly of any value any longer) will be kicked out to manual review process where the amount and other key metadata can be validated. Obviously, with handwritten checks that is a more difficult process and more prone to error but the key essentials are:
The amount, and with two methods of indication on the check (and a relatively limited range of how people write numbers, as opposed to have they write letters.
The MICR line: the pre-printed numbers at the bottom of the check, which tells the bank receiving the check what bank and account number to request the funds from, and the number of the check in question.
The check is signed (though not validating what the signature says)
The check is endorsed (again, not particularly validating what the endorsement says).
The software can and to varying degrees does try to figure out much of the other data on the check but it isn’t so much used in deciding whether to accept the check image for deposit. It’ll also use this information to avoid things like depositing the same check twice (MICR line and amount match a check already deposited).
But yes, not every check is reviewed by human eyes and the ultimate check is when the account you’re drawing on complains (or doesn’t exist) and those issues are tied up in the risk decisions on when to make deposits available. When a bank makes your deposit, or a portion of it, available for checks not drawn on itself it is essentially advancing the money with the risk that it won’t get it back. And the window in which the other bank involved has to determine that the funds aren’t available or any other issue is remarkably long (I want to say 45 days) so be glad banks don’t actually wait until they’ve received the money and there’s no chance of having to give it back.
But again, on post-dated checks, there is no “rule” about honoring or not honoring post-dating beyond the fact that if the issuer of a check formally notifies their bank (the bank the check is drawn on) of the postdating then that bank has to respect the post-dating by not releasing the funds until that date. However, the recipient bank (where the payee attempts to deposit it) has no such obligation and can cash it immediately (and runs the risk of never getting the money from the other bank). And you (the person who cashed the check) get charged a Deposit Item Returned fee.
All the ATMs I go to scan the check and automatically “know” how much it’s written out for. But I think this is more of a courtesy thing than a security thing. I’m pretty sure there’s an option that allows you to manually enter the dollar amount.
Though envelope-free deposit ATMs are sold as a huge convenience for customers (and it generally is), this is the big reason the technology was developed. Combined envelope-free ATMs with Check21 (an image of the check is processed so the deposit no longer has to wait for the machine to be physically serviced) and the window between when your deposit is made and when funds can be drawn off the check’s account is potentially very short and not something you should rely on.
I should probably have added that I haven’t used an ATM in years and I heard this probably 15 years ago and even at the time I didn’t really give it much thought beyond “hmmm, yeah”.
I don’t think he meant you were literally conspiring to break any rule.
The idea is that the rule exists: no cashing early checks. When you use the ATM, it is you and the machine figuratively working together to break a rule. The cashiers, on the other hand, choose not to break the rule. So, the fact it works at an ATM, but not at a cashier is not a de facto indication there is no such rule, but that between you and the machine you pull off apparent rule breaking.
Not knowing what bank you’re dealing with another possibility for the split could be institutional.
ATM operations may be run separately from branch operations. And the bank may give each their own discretion for setting policies on this topic and different executives simply made different decisions.
Not on this topic specifically, but I know many examples at my employer where the same transaction will have very different risk rules when done online versus in a branch. The reasons for it are generally good from an institutional perspective but are opaque to the customer when they run into them.
But see, it’s not the ATM that’s cashing my check. Someone in the bank is taking my check out of the ATM and crediting my account with the money. That’s why the money isn’t available until the next business day. There have been a couple times when I’ve been in overdraft and deposited a (post-dated) check in thru the ATM and the next day I had the sum of the check, minus the amount of my overdraft plus whatever fees where applicable, available to me as funds. Those actions aren’t performed by the ATM, they are performed by bank employees.
When you deposit the check via ATM are you putting it in an envelope? If not then odds are very good that the check is processed long before any human touches it.
If not, then odds are still very good that no human is doing any more processing of that check than taking it out of the envelope (and depending on how they’re handling their ATMs maybe not even then, when you pay your phone bill by check it goes to a lockbox account where it will be removed from the envelope, separated, the payment coupon will be read, the accompanying check will be read and all the accounts appropriately dealt with without any human ever looking at it) and feeding it into another machine that does what a modern ATM does without the envelope.
ETAPlus, even if it is a very old-fashioned bank and all of that is still done by hand with a human taking it out of the machine and then manually processing the check, it isn’t like you’re still there and they can refuse to take it. They’ll just take the risk and you’ll be charged all the fees if the risk goes badly. Whereas when you deposit in branch and a human can see with certainty what the date is, they have the option of saying “screw it, we don’t want to deal with you or them if this goes sideways.”
I believe the new no-envelope ATM’s scan the check, automatically process the transaction by reading the routing/account numbers, and then they shred the physical check inside the machine. All they need is the scan for any future needs. I once mistakenly put my own check in for deposit (against the same account) and it immediately halted the deposit and let me know I couldn’t write checks to myself.
