Cheque mate
The motor is supposed to be going for its annual overhaul this evening.
Spanner usually collects it late in the day and returns it the following evening. That’s all fine and dandy but it leads to an annual problem.
Where did I leave my chequebook?
Spanner is now the only person I know who relies on cheques for payment. Every other transaction through the year is done either with a debit card or cash. As a result, my chequebook which used to be an essential accessory when going out is now relegated to the back of somewhere in the junk room to gather cobwebs.
Back in the Good Old Days a chequebook was essential and when out on the lash in Dublin a pub would be chosen almost solely on whether they would cash a cheque or not. A refusal to cash a cheque would mean that pub was added to the list of no-go establishments. Any major shopping such as groceries were also paid by cheque and as a result I frequently had to call the bank to send me a new book.
All that is gone now. I suppose it will be only a matter of time before cheques will become extinct. I don’t know what the likes of Spanner will do then. Will he have to carry some kind of card reader around with him? If he demands cash, that will be tricky as the amount varies enormously from year to year and I don’t like having wads of notes lying around just in case it’s an expensive year.
Bugger!
Now where is that fucking chequebook …… ?
I haven’t used a check (note correct spelling) in years until I moved into this apartment complex. I asked what the URL is to pay my rent. I was told to drop my check(note correct spelling) into a mail slot. I also wondered where my checkbook was hiding. I ended up ordering new checks(note correct spelling) from my bank. I still can’t find the old checks(note correct spelling).
You Yanks really souldn’t be so proud of your illiteracy.
Spanner will check [i.e inspect] my car for faults and I will pay him by cheque [i.e. money order].
You can’t pay someone with an inspection? Though I suppose it’s a novel idea?
To avoid the same problem next year, best plan would be to hand your chequebook over to Spanner and let him keep it. Then, whenever he needs paying, he can bring it with him for completion, taking it back with him when he leaves. Sorted.
Hah! Not a bad idea. I like a drop of lateral thinking.
If you ask him nicely, I’m sure Spanner will be perfectly happy to accept cash. And if you do not wish to have a receipt, or any other paper trail, you may find him perfectly amenable to slight discount. At least half the VAT he’ll not have to pay.
To pay cash I would have to do a round trip of several miles to get to an ATM. I make the cheque out to “CASH” so the discount still applies. 😉
I have discovered that the expectation in England is plastic or electronic funds transfer – I do not have a cheque book at all.
All my transactions these days are by cash or card, usually card. There are a few very rare occasions where a cheque is needed though, maybe once or twice a year. I generally use cheques for large amounts only such as paying for the car or paying for a holiday.
I still use a checkbook for just about everything. Sure, I pay for groceries and the like with my debit card since it’s a heck of lot more convenient than paying by check but the collected receipts totals always go into the checkbook register once a week.
Also the wife and I still refuse to pay any of our utility bills online–only by “check-in-the-mail” type payments which means we get our utility bills in the mail as well (to the continued annoyance of our various utility companies).
We’ll probably have to give into the “new” way of doing it sooner or later but by then “they” will probably want us to pay for everything by using our smartphones instead. Seeing as how there’s smartphone “ID stamps” on every grocery package these days I wouldn’t be surprised. Trouble is, we don’t own a smartphone.
I tend to go down the electronic route where possible. All utilities, insurance and crap like that are paid by direct debit [and I keep a very close eye on my accounts] so I just get notifications – “we are about to debit your account for X amount for the following”. Paying by cheque is just extra hassle as it involves going to the post office every time. The latest yoke is the “contactless” machine. I can pay for small amounts [under €30] just by waving my card over the machine. As a result I never carry a chequebook and rarely have more than a few coins in my pocket. Also I have an electronic record of every transaction just by logging into my account.
Fortunately none of the above requires a smartphone, as mine is a heap of crap and only useful for texts or phonecalls [which is all it should do anyway]
Paying by check is a bit easier it seems since we just have to put our outgoing mail into our mailbox across the street from our home and put the “flag” on the mail box up . The mail carrier comes down our way the next day, takes out the outgoing and stuffs in the incoming, and puts the “flag” down. Done.