I don’t have any bills set up to allow a billing entity to draft anything. The bank offers every month to automatically pull in utility bills, but I’d rather do it myself.
Yes, I just ordered some checks a couple months ago. I write checks, I like stamps, I mail checks, I give checks to contractors, yard people, relatives, etc. I feel like I use checks more than cash. I also use online payments, paypal, auto-pay for utilities, etc. I don’t write checks at the grocery store, package store, restaurants, gas stations, etc.
I just checked and I only wrote four checks last year, three for taxes and one for my passport renewal. I’m expecting tax refunds this year, so it’s possible that 2024 might be my first year without writing a check.
With sixteen blank checks left, I think I can hold off ordering more for now.
No. Every…maybe once a year…or half-decade…I get in with some US state that wants me to pay them with an actual check for some damned reason…but from recent past they seem to have been satisfied with setting up an ACH payment. Either one-time or recurring.
And, in fact, to settle some debts with personal friends/families, I’m liking ACH. Transfers are free from my end at my credit union. I don’t do it that often, and often just use cash to pay them off, but unless my memory is age-appropriate, it’s worked like a charm.
No, I haven’t bothered to order any checks for well over fifteen years, at least. Twenty-five years is probably more like it. I have bought money orders a few times, quite a while ago…I think it was for rent at some crappy apartment, but, like I said, that was a long time ago. Not in past fifteen years anyway, pretty sure…although there’s a sneaking suspicion I may have had to pay by check to some agency or company or something sometime in the interim…not sure, though. Doubt it.
Of course, as soon as I say this, I’m required to use a check.
I’m receiving some money from my recently departed grandfather’s estate, to be issued as monthly payments from the insurance company where he had an annuity set up. It’s a US firm, and they want to mail us a check. We said, can you do direct deposit instead? They said yes. We said great, here’s our bank account info here in Europe.
And they said, no, it has to be a bank in the US, and to set up direct deposit, a voided check has to be physically mailed to us. We said, seriously? They said, yes, seriously.
We had to dig into our boxed records to find an old check pad, which thankfully we haven’t discarded.
Positively neanderthal by Euro banking standards.
I do this with almost everything.
I don’t think any merchants accept cheques at point-of-sale in Canada anymore.
I don’t get this. Why do you need a “cheque pad”, (not even sure what that is) to receive a cheque?
Last time I was in Canada it was hilarious watching an older American customer trying to pay at Sobey’s with a check drawn on an American account. The young cashier was perplexed. Polite, but perplexed.
Customer: I will just put CAD after the amount. I don’t believe in paying by credit card in a grocery store.
Cashier: I don’t think we have any way of even recording that. [silently to us] Help!
We went to another cashier after it was obvious that they had reached an impasse.
This was not 1995. It was in 2018.
A cheque pad is a set of cheques bound together. Like a notepad has notepaper bound together.
You tear of one sheet (cheque) at a time.
They said they wanted to send us physical checks for the recurring payments.
We said we preferred direct deposit to our account.
They said they could do that.
We gave them our bank account information.
They said, no, that won’t work. To set up direct deposit, we need to send the company our own voided check. Physically. By mail.
So we had to go into our attic and dig through our box of financial records for the check pad, which is the pack of checks bound across the top with a perforated tear-off point. We then wrote VOID all over it and put it in the post.
At some point in the next few days, they will receive our envelope, take out our voided check, and use the routing numbers etc to establish direct deposit for the payments they will be sending to us.
Clear now?
Edit to add: I mean, clear in the sense of what they were requiring us to do. I don’t mean, clear in the sense of why American banking is so backward.
Ah, the “us” here was in the voice of the other people. I thought the us here was you.
All right, yes, looking back up, I can see that the phrasing was ambiguous. Sorry about that. Clear now?
They launched debit at the grocery store when I was in first year university in 1989. I don’t believe I have ever written a cheque for groceries, although I remember my mother doing so.
I have autopay set up ( either through the bank or the billing entity) for payments that are the same every month - insurance payments, mortgage etc. but not for credit cards or any other bill where I might want to pay a different amount or on a different date . If I set up autopayment for my credit card , it’s going to be either for the minimum payment or the total balance. I usually pay the balance but might not if it’s particularly high this month.
I have autopay set up on my credit card for the total balance, so I never accrue an interest charge. The balance payment is on the last day of the billing cycle. For me, this works fine.
Also, I have the ‘level payment plan’ on both my gas and electric bills. These bills never vary more than a few dollars from the previous month, and the payments are made on the due date listed on the invoice. Again, this works great for me.
BTW, I receive only one paper invoice in the mail each month. All others are sent to me via email. The paper bill comes from the city, whose antiquated billing system still insists on paper.
Tryimg to pay a merchant by cheque in the modern era is bad enough, but trying to pay with a cheque from another freaking country reminds me of Dave Barry complaining that when he’s stuck in line it’s always behind someone like that, typically trying to cash a cheque from the Bank of Yemen using their underwear label as ID.
I feel your pain. I have had so much trouble with US banks from abroad. They just don’t seem to understand banking.
We could start talking about US bank requirements for endorsing checks. Then you would see how stupid it really is.
My auto insurance company is just fine with accepting premium payments from just me, but insist on issuing checks that are payable to me and my wife (not money from claims, but payment refunds). Which kicks in some archaic rules about how the checks must be signed on the back and what account the check can be deposited in. These rules are known only to the bank teller, and seem to vary from teller to teller. Mobile deposit is the way to go on these checks, because mobile deposit doesn’t seem to give a fuck about endorsement rules (as it should be).
I’m down to my homeowners association dues plus the IRS and state tax department, in addition to the odd contractor not set up to take e-payments. I refuse to e-file my taxes so I’ll use checks for years in which I owe tax money and receive checks for years in which I get refunds.
Security concerns, or something else?