I was at Office Depot. Guy tells me the amount. I start filling out the check. He says, “we’ll fill it out”. OK, I assume they got a stamp that fills out their name. Fine.
So, I start filling out the amount. He’s saying again, “we’ll fill it out”. I’m confused and a little irked. I give my wife the WTF is wrong with this guy look. Then he says, “it’s all electronic”.
Sure enough, his register scanned the check and printed VOID on it. He handed it back to me. I shredded it later. I still filled out my stub and entered it into Quicken later.
Sams Club took my filled out check, their machine processed it electronically and the clerk handed it back to me. I suspect it didn’t need filling out. The clerk was too polite to make me feel stupid.
I noticed three years ago that my utility bill checks had been changed to electronic transactions. That is an inconvenience because it doesn’t show as a cancelled check entry on my bank statement. Makes balancing the checkbook really fun.
It’s exhausting keeping up with all the technology that keeps changing. Something as routine as filling out a check has been taken away from us. Unless you’re at a small store without the fancy tech.
I guess most big retailers use this system now.
Welcome to the 21st century. I guess it’s wonderful for the younger generations. It’s confusing and aggravating for the rest of us.
Btw, I do use a debit card for the majority of my purchases. I only write maybe 8 to 10 checks a month. Primarily for bills, my utilities, credit card bill, medical bills etc.
If not writing checks makes me a member of the “younger generation” it’s a surprise to me. I’m in my 70s and the only checks I have written in the last five or six years are for the IRS. Not sure why we go on sending them checks; my DH does the taxes and hands me the checkbook.
Tell me the story about balancing a check book again, grandpa. Was that when people used to keep all the little slips of paper and do a bunch of math in a little book when they got home?
Why didn’t they just look up their account on line when they wanted to see all the activity?
Forget it, Jake. It’s aceplacetown. The magical land in one man’s head where a sarsaparilla still costs a nickel, ladies wear dresses, people write checks at stores, and everyone knows to avoid the slick-backed reefer addicts in the breezeways.
Finally, someone who understands how hollow my life became when filling out checks was taken away from me. Each day I used to wake up and look at the day and try to figure out how many checks I’d get to fill out. If it was warm and sunny outside I would tell myself “TriPolar you handsome devil, this could be a nine check day! Seven at least.” But now, now each day is dark and dreary, my checkbook lies in the desk drawer, unused, unwanted, unappreciated. It’s just another case of technology sucking the quality time out of our lives, robbing us of the simple pleasures of spelling out numbers and putting the wrong year in the date way into January or longer.
Never?? I’m “only” 40 but I wrote checks in stores even into my early 30s.
These days, though…all my bills are direct debit, so since April of last year (when I paid for my last car’s annual registration) I’ve written two checks: a check for the cost of the new car I bought just before New Years, and a check to register it at town hall.
I want to take advantage of a magazine offer, though, and was confused when it said “enclose your payment” and didn’t have a spot to write in a card number, so I guess they expect me to write a check too. Weird.
You don’t have to use autopay. I pay all my bills online. I use my phone actually. But I initiate the payments. They don’t come out of my checking account automatically.
Instead of your merchant having to transport the physical paper to their bank, who then transports it, thru a clearing house, to your back, they only need to send some bits & bytes thru the interwebz after converting it.
It shouldn’t be any harder to reconcile as you still have a debit entry from the merchant you paid in your account. (If for any reason it’s from a third-party that they may be using to do the conversion, that’s a rules violation & they can be fined if they don’t remedy it.)
This. I don’t allow anyone to take money from my account on a regular basis, especially variable payments like utilities. On the rare case where they screw up, or the (hopefully rarer) cases where they don’t fix it for four months, until I threaten them with regulators (I’m looking at you local electric company), they don’t wipe your account out or make it tough to pay your other bills.
I’ve never taken up paying on my phone. I’m hopelessly out of date paying on my computer?
Paper checks are a PITA, to send or receive. My spouse will do the picture-deposit - what’s that called? - or I’d forget and use the back of the check as a note pad.
And balancing a check book? I gave that up decades ago.