WTF are you even talking about? A hold is put on the account when the check is turned in? Are you nutso? A check is a piece of paper promising you’ll pay, and it takes SEVERAL days to clear. MOST places no longer accept checks anymore. Whole Foods no longer takes checks, neither does my regional-sized chain grocery and neither does the niche organic/natural store. Costco is another prominent example. It’s cash or debit card or their in-house AMEX. I don’t know what rock you’re living under, but checks are not “de rigour” anywhere but small towns in the middle of nowhere. As a result of the economy many places only accept debit or cash as well. I write exactly one check per month: for my rent.
MacTech, whatever results in the situation, PLEASE make your owner no longer accept checks. Seriously, most places no longer take them, and there’s no reason at all for them since debit cards became popular. Checks are old fashioned debit cards essentially, except with none of the reliability.
Some places still have to accept checks, because the clientele is so varied and there really are people - mostly older - who still use checks. Now, the difference is that where I work at an animal ER, we take checks but use a telecheck system, which isn’t the cheapest setup and would probably be prohibitive for a smaller business. The telecheck system debits the account immediately just like a check card. In fact, the check never gets “deposited”, it gets voided on the spot and handed back to the client.
We still get the occasional person who wants to float a check, and we have to explain to them that it doesn’t work that way any more. On VERY rare occasions, we will sometimes agree to hold a check and run it through telecheck in a few days, but we really only do that a couple times a year any more.
As to the OP, I agree with the others who think the FB post would be a bad idea, which you’ve already decided anyway!
When I deposit a check for work (we still accept checks, and still get all our wholesale payments in the form of a check), $100 is available immidiatly, the rest is almost always available within 24 hours. In fact, one of the side effects of Check 21 is that checks clear waaay faster then they used to since they are now scanned in at the first bank and everything is done electronically from there.
I never really thought of Milwaukee as the middle of nowhere, but most places around here still take checks.
I guess I don’t get old people. My 90 year old grandmother has had a cell phone since 1995 and a debit card since her bank sent her one. Debit cards are FREE with a checking account; unless you are paying someone that literally does not have a credit card machine (I was towed last year and in the middle of his decrepit truck the AAA towing guy had a card scanner) such as a handyman or your landlord, then a check makes sense. Still though, for grocery store transactions and any sort of retail purchase at all it is pure idiocy to use a check. Debit cards are how many decades old now?
But Joey, isn’t the electronic check system you have at your store prohibitively expensive for most?
If you guys are selling such expensive merchandise, why in God’s name would you guys not invest in a check machine that hooks up to your existing debit/credit set up? They process checks immediately as debits, rather than letting a few grand in merchandise walk out the door on a wish and a dream.
It’s not too bad. We pay about $60 per month to run telecheck. We usually pay the minimum charge, if we ran more checks it would be a bit cheaper. On the one hand, it’s yet another expense, OTOH. In the 8 or 9 years we’ve been using it, I’ve never had to hunt down a check writer, argue with them over the bounced check fee, get the police involved etc etc etc, so that makes it worth while. I swipe a check, Telecheck (more or less) says YES or NO. If they say Yes, that money is as good as mine, if they say No, you can either leave your stuff or find another method of payment, period. It keeps me and my employees out of the equation. No judgement calls, no managers involved, no one calls me at home to ask of the homeless drunk lady with no ID can write a $50 check for cash, it’s YES or NO*, period. Also, all my checks for the day come down as one big deposit which saves me money on bank fees, since I only pay for one ACH deposit instead of one fee for each check I deposit.
Also, when I mention above that the funds are in my account within 24 hours, I meant that’s how fast the funds move when I take an actual paper check to the bank. Telecheck is about that fast as well (24-48 hours). But that’s a whole different ball game. When a check is swiped through the Telecheck machine Telecheck pays me, not the customer.
*Granted, the people that get NO, still end up arguing, but those people are stupid anyways. Those are the same type of people that will call me up and demand…demand to talk to the cashier that declined her credit card. They want to know why she chose to decline her credit card but not the other people in line. :rolleyes: There’s only so many ways you can say “ma’am, my cashier didn’t choose to decline your card. You need to call the number on the back and ask them, it’s not our decision” But I’m rambling now.
I always thought it was funny (before we had Telecheck) when someone would be downright offended when we’d ask for a phone number. One lady said she didn’t trust us with it. My father, in his infinite snark looked at her and said “Excuse me? You don’t trust me with your phone number, but you expect me to trust you that this little piece of paper is worth $75?”
Okay, so electric check is a $700/year fee (I imagined it was roughly double). Since MachTech’s place is running such razor thin profits, it really would still be best to just stick with credit/debit, IMO.
I can’t remember exactly what our fees are-- but ours is set up like our debit credit stuff. You buy or rent the machine (which can be anything from a tiny monthly rental fee to all kinds of money, depending on what kind of machine you get. . . I think ours are all about $500, but I might be misremembering), then you pay a percentage on each charge. I want to say our check percentage is less than either debit or credit.
Hmm, then why are places banning checks left and right? Is it because at a multi-unit check out place you can’t have one of those machines at every register?
No idea. Then again, they have these at the grocery store by my house (I only know this because my wallet was stolen and I spent the better part of a day wondering how I was going to do things like grocery shop, since the bank was closed for a few days. About that time, I remember checks exist. I called the grocery store to be sure they even take checks :D). Doesn’t Walmart also do this? Or maybe I’m misremembering.
Actually, even the little local tire place by my house has this check debit system.
Doesn’t Wal-Mart always do what? Not take checks? I do remember they have limitations on them, but I’m not sure they banned them outright. Whatever they were, they got my mom to start using her AMEX a few years ago.