mission

I can't find the thread of the dude who works for HSBC - has this been deleted?
I'd like to ask him something about HSBC and cheques.
If the thread has been deleted - here is my question if the dude sees this.
If a corporate cheque is issued and you can see the debit in the account/bank statement, however the beneficiary denies having cashed it/banked it, how easy or difficult is it for the bank to put a trace on the cheque?
I've heard banks can't do this easily - is this true?

Johnnyboy11

So, you are looking for banking advice from an Egyptian chap, whose username was an American wrestler (The Undertaker), purporting to work for HSBC and willing to give advice for free in his own time?

Pulaski

Likely very easy in theory, but whether (i) the customer service assistant is trained to perform a trace, (ii) the customer service assistant has access to the right system(s) to perform the trace, and (iii) the bank is willing to make it cheap and easy for you to get the information, are whole other matters!

BEVS

Yes. Was deleted re advertising I believe.

Miss Ann Thrope

But ...but......the Lebanese ladies....

BEVS

Attachment 127056

mission

well since he said he worked for the bank and worked in the corporate dept, I figured no harm in posing the question to him

mission

the thing is I've heard that it's not so easy for the bank to trace a cheque and hence why every tom, dick & harriett end up taking copies of cheques before banking them - otherwise what is the whole point of taking copies of cheques if it was deemed very straight forward to put a trace on a cheque.
I never understood the concept of taking copies of cheques.

Bahtatboy

I never understood HSBC in UAE. Except that the decision makers which whom I dealt were the opposite of customer focused.

Pulaski

Well it used to be that checks were mailed/couriered between banks as part of the clearing process, so if you deposited a USD cheque drawn on the National Bank of Abu Dhabi into your account at Bank Muscat, Oman, then Bank Muscat would send the cheque to their USD correspondent bank, which might be, say, Citibank in New York (in any case it would be a bank in the US).

Citibank would then send the check to the National Bank of Abu Dhabi's USD correspondent, which might be, say, Standard Chartered Bank in New York, who would then send it to the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, who would debit the account on which the cheque was drawn, and then send the money back along the same chain that the cheque traveled.

Obviously there were plenty of opportunistic for the cheque to go missing! It is also why depositing foreign cheques was slow and expensive. Now the documents can be scanned and processed electronically, but they still have to pass through the chain of banks in most cases, with USD cleared in New York, GBP in London, JPY in Tokyo, etc.

MidAtlantic

Am I missing something? On my personal and employer's bank account I can pull up an image of the paid check on-line and see when and where it was cashed/paid in. In every case of questions about non-payment the beneficiary has "forgotten" that they had received it!

Pulaski

For personal checks, yes, that is correct these days, and the practice until about a decade ago in the US was that banks could mail back your cleared checks (I think there was a fee). .....

The problem is with cashiers cheques, bank drafts, and money orders (post #1 referred to a "corporate check"), they are drawn on one of the bank's own accounts, which might have hundreds of cheques a day cleared through it, and obviously customers don't have access to see if they cheque they purchased has been cleared yet.

Mark callaway

Yest it was deleted for advertising rules.

I don't work in corporate dept, what I know regarding the cheques in general that they have serial numbers and a digital mark printed on the cheque, as long as you have sufficient funds in the account from the date of writing the cheque for six months then you don't have to worry, the system in HSBC shows the serial number of the cheque and the amount and they can communicate with the other bank and the other bank may tell the sender bank if that number with the amount has been deposited to the beneficiary account or not (I am not sure about the communication between the banks but logically if there is a legal case both banks adhere to the central bank regulations).

I can tell a story would benefit, I received a call from a premier British customer and guess what, she wrote a cheque to the landlord and she thought like other banks the clearing time would be in 5 days, however in HSBC it takes 2 working days maximum, so she wrote the cheque before the day of the date of the rend payment and then her husband transferred the money to her account about two hours later the same day after she already wrote the cheque, the cheque returned as insufficient funds right away and she was penalized from the landlord 2000 AED for that plus the bank charges (100 AED), the irony was that the lady was upset from the bank from the speed of the clearing cycle , however her RM communicated with the other bank and the landlord hoping to reduce the penalty, I hope that happened.

Anyway, be careful of returned cheques as central bank made a law in UAE if 3 returned cheques in a row they would close your account and at least you will be blacklisted and you will be deprived from many services in the banks, in HSBC if you have got a returned cheque due to insufficient funds you cannot order a cheque book the following six months.

I hope I helped. Cheers

Mark callaway

And now your RM will ring you again

Mark callaway

Yes because you are not a Lebanese lady