I don’t think you’re overthinking it; I think you’re just thinking of it like somebody in 2023, not in 1970.
Back then walking into a retail bank you have no relationship with carrying a check made to cash that’s drawn on an unrelated bank and walking out with a stack of $20 or $100 was normal. No ID required.
In small towns well into the 1980s they had counter checks at the grocery store. Those were books of fully blank checks with no routing or account numbers, just the bank’s name & logo. When you wanted to pay for your groceries, just pick the pad by the register that matches your bank, write your name in the upper left, the grocery store’s name (or “cash”) on the payee line, fill in the amount and sign. After the store deposits it, that bank will figure out what the right account info is; they know and recognize who “Mabel Jones” is in that town. Really.
It was a more trusting era. Until the crooks had a field day ripping off banks with fake checks. And until Congress passed various anti-money-laundering statutes that require the bank to take a DNA sample before they’ll transact $2 of business with a customer.
I have bought five new vehicles since '08. I used cashier’s checks for the first two, personal checks for the others. The money left my account just as quickly with the personal checks as it did with the cashier’s checks.
The irritating part of buying a new car is how the dealerships delay finishing the state title and registration paperwork for ten days or more after the purchase. I was ready to hit the road for a trip with my most recent car and I wasn’t going to do it with a paper temporary plate. I bought the car on a Friday. Their bank got the funds from mine on the following Tuesday, but they still made me wait ten business days (two weeks) before they did the paperwork.
I finally got an email from them saying that they’d sent in the paperwork, but I should probably wait a few days for it to “get through the system” before I went to the tag office. I immediately called the tag office. Their response? Come on in, you’re ready to go!
I figure the reason for the ten days’ wait is financial for them. This dealership was one of at least five owned by the same outfit. They’re sitting on a good bit of sales tax cash for those ten days before they turn it over to the state. That can add up to a good bit of interest for five dealerships over a year’s time. I get this.
What I don’t get is why the person urged me to wait even longer when there was no need to do so!
There is/was one downside to making a check out to ‘Cash’; it is a bearer instrument. If someone wrote a check to pulykamell & it blew out your car window & I found it I couldn’t do anything with it. If I tried to cash it, I was committing fraud because I am not the named payee. However, if someone gave you a check made out to ‘Cash’ & you lost it & I found it; that’s a bearer instrument & I could take that to the bank & cash it
I was surprised in May, when I bought a new vehicle, the dealer completed all the title and registration while I waited. Then the finance guy, where all the papers get signed, leaned over into a cardboard box and pulled out a license plate, which they then attached to the vehicle. He says the state figured that new car dealers could be trusted enough. It saved me a trip to the agency and I didn’t have to drive with temporary plates.
In the modern banking system it doesn’t work that way anymore. About 20 years ago I accepted a personal check to sell a car. I told the buyer I need to make sure it clears before I release the title. I asked my bank (Bank of America) how I would know when it cleared. They said they don’t know when it clears. The way that money moves between banks is a lot different than it was 50 years ago. They get notified only if it bounces. So if it hasn’t bounced in a week or so it’s probably good.
I 100% believe you but I am surprised at this. I thought a cashier’s check was almost as good as cash. Maybe the closest thing to cash that is not cash. Much better than a personal check because the cashier’s check is drawn against the bank’s account and not your personal account. Chances are MUCH better the bank will be good when it comes to covering the check than your personal check ever could be unless you are Bill Gates.
That and any fees for one are incurred by the person getting the cashier’s check. There is no loss to the merchant who cashes it.
Only reason I can see a merchant not wanting one is not wanting a paper trail. If you pay in cash they can more easily cook the books come tax time. And, since you got a cashier’s check, presumably you have that cash on hand so, bring them the cash.
Confused. Are you saying it’s not possible to stop payment on any check these days, or is this something unique to checks that are made out to “cash”? If the latter, why would my bank care who a check is made out to when trying to decide whether they’re willing to refuse payment on it?
I don’t know why I couldn’t do it with the account number, the amount and the check number - but at any rate, not my concern. If the plumber wants the check made out to “cash” because I don’t have $300 in actual cash and he doesn’t want records, then it’s his problem if he loses the check. If you mean I want to stop payment because the work is shoddy, chances are good that I won’t find out in time to stop the check anyway.
I’m pretty sure that 40 years ago when I worked in banks they were only notified if it bounced - the bank can’t give you 100% assurance that the check is cleared probably for a month or two for at least the month or two so the physical check gets back to the account holder (which is why I would expect a cashier’s/certified check to be preferable) but I’ve always had a bank be able to tell me when the money is available (depending on which bank it’s drawn on , where it’s located , $X will be available the next business day, $Y will be available the second and so on). That’s usually a pretty good substitute for knowing when it has cleared because it will bounce for insufficient funds or a non existent account within a day or two.
By federal law banks are required to release holds on deposits after something like 5 days (short for local checks; shorter still for checks drawn from the same bank). However, that doesn’t mean the money has actually been transferred to the bank, it’s just a reasonable time to assume that it has, to prevent the bank from unfairly taking advantage of float.
Back in the 1990s before the advent of color laser printers, desktop publishing apps, etc., substantially zero cashier’s checks were forgeries. It was just too hard. So banks and the public could treat any cashier’s check as 100% real and 100% backed by the bank whose name is on it. They were “good as gold” and “good as cash”. But safer since unless made payable to “cash” they weren’t bearer instruments.
Then modern tech made it completely trivial for anyone with $1000 worth of home office gear from Wal*Mart to print completely convincing fake cashier’s checks. And meanwhile various forms of electronic money transfer have exploded.
With the result that now, real cashier’s checks are kinda rare and every bank needs to treat any cashier’s check presented to them as most likely a forgery until proven otherwise. If it’s drawn on their own bank they can immediately verify its authenticity. If not, not.
Just another way rampant easy-to-commit crime throws massive amounts of sand into the well-lubricated gears of commerce.
You didn’t ask about travelers checks, thank goodness. Decades ago my parents kept a couple hundred dollars of travelers checks around the house, thinking they were safer than keeping cash on hand, but something anyone would readily accept.
I had to laugh at the recent accounting of my deceased father-in-law’s estate. One day they credited $100 from travelers checks, and the next day deducted $100 due to returned travelers checks. I have no idea as to what happened.
I recently found a couple of traveler’s checks in the back of a drawer, dating back to when my wife and I first got married. I went to my bank to cash them in, and I’m guessing the teller had never seen one before as she didn’t seem to understand that they required a second signature in her presence. She was just about to stick them in her drawer (sans second sig) when I asked her if she needed the second signature; she took another look at them, and finally agreed that I should sign once more.
Those really seemed to drop off the face of the earth. I remember traveling Europe in 1996 with an envelope full of travelers checks, but then a few years later, mid 1998, when I moved to Europe for five plus years, I never saw one and the American Express office in the city has shut down.
Traveler’s checks were the solution for carrying safer spending money while away from home before credit cards existed. Once they were near universal within countries, traveler’s checks became pretty much international only. Once international credit cards were near universal, traveler’s checks were … buggy-whip obsolete.
I remember in 1990-1992 a series of visitors/guests from Pakistan showing up with bundles of American Express travelers checks and after a day or two would ask me to change them into USD notes for them because no one would accept them.
In the stores in which I worked in 1987-90, we did take travelers checks but you needed a manager to approve them. The cashiers (mostly teenagers and young adults from less affluent families) had no idea what they were. But they were vanishingly rare. Maybe ten transactions over two and a half years that I personally handled/approved.
Seems like they were vanishing long before 1996-98.
I was still using travelers checks into the late 90s when traveling away from home but never really tried to use them in stores. Pretty much expected I’d have to go to a bank eventually. This was still when credit cards were still not quite universal and stores taking out of state checks could be hit or miss.