My husband was laid off from his job back in July. He applied for and was approved for unemployment benefits and we have been receiving them biweekly since then. He just received his latest check in the mail today, as a matter of fact. He has not cashed that one yet.
When I just checked our bank account online a few minutes ago, I saw that the last unemployment check dated 2 weeks ago had a “stop payment” put on it. Now that money is gone out of our account, along with a $20 stop payment fee! Well that check was cashed 2 weeks ago so of course we have spent the money on bills and life, and now we have pretty much nothing left in our account seeing as we were stretched as it is with him not working. Why would the unemployment office put a stop payment on a check? He has kept up with calling in to the automated system and keeping his resume posted like he is supposed to, otherwise he wouldn’t be receiving the checks at all. So now I wonder if the one he got in the mail today is bad too, and how can we tell?
First step would be to call them and ask of course. No one here can tell you the specifics. At a guess I’d say they probably did a double payment or an incorrect amount. Either way they should be able to clear this up in no time.
A call to the unemployment office has them baffled. Apparently their response was “that’s odd.” And from one woman there “In the history of my 3 year employment here I have never heard of this happening.” Now we can’t do anything until a supervisor decides to call us back.
I don’t have a good feeling about fighting with the unemployment office for a new check and reimbursement of our fees. Hopefully this won’t take weeks of paperwork to clear up.
Anyone here work for unemployment or have had to deal with something like this?
Heh. If it’s properly endorsed and all, you could always hand it over to a collection agency.
Stopping payment doesn’t mean that their legal obligation associated with the check is voided.
I’d love to hear those collection calls…
I have the check now. It is made out correctly and endorsed correctly, for the right amount. So far in my searching the only way I can see that they might ever stop payment is if a check is reported missing or stolen, but that’s not the case. Unless someone else reported a check stolen and they got the numbers mixed up and stopped his or something? But I would think they would at least verify the name on the check before just stopping payment…this doesn’t make sense.
Since the MESC (that still the right outfit?) is acting surprised, the next place to go is the bank. Maybe some idiot clerk applied a stop payment to the wrong check and/or wrong account. (It would not even have to be an MESC check.)
Very firmly ask the bank for copies of the paperwork authorizing the stop payment. Make sure that it was supposed to be that check in your account. If the bank has screwed up, make sure that they take immediate steps to return both the funds and the fee and be prepared to make nasty noises to the bank inspectors if they are reluctant to help.
Hmmm…that could be. We belong to a small credit union that allows us to use other ATM’s to make deposits since they don’t have their own. He deposited the check in the ATM of another credit union branch, and that branch are the ones who applied the stop payment. Our credit union says that’s why it took so long to appear. The ATM deposit showed up in our account the next day, but our credit union didn’t get notice of the stop payment until today.
Well the unemployment office has come up with a theory. Apparently after a few years of issuing checks they run out of numbers and start over. If the previous check with this number was flagged for a stop payment then they surmise the flag was never removed and now the new check was stopped as well. Seems like a system that is full of flaws, but there you go. Now we have to send the check and the supporting paperwork to Detroit so some more people can look at it before it can get re-issued. Whee!
Ran out of numbers? How do you run out of numbers? I routinely receive checks at my business that have 12-digit check numbers. I have no idea why these numbers are so long…they couldn’t have possibly started at 101 or even 1001.
Obviously, the programmers in the companies that issue those checks had the sense to create a field long enough to accommodate longer numbers.
The MESC’s system was (in)famously created by Accenture (then known as Andersen Consulting), so I would not be surprised if the check numbers only went to four digits.