Years ago, I accidentally paid my gas bill FAR in advance by sending them both their regular check, and the check for another utility. Both were cashed by the utility.

That means, that even though I made the check out right, and the name on the check didn’t match the person/business cashing it, the bank let it go through.

Taking Matters into My Own Hands

Needless to say, I was a little steamed. I called the bank and had a nice long conversation with the people there. The gist of the conversation was;

• We don’t get copies of the check for weeks/months
• Via the ACH system, neither names nor dates are verified before transferring funds
• There is a way to file a complaint, but it generally will take a long time to resolve. (i.e. recommended I ‘live’ with it.)

So, I decided to chalk it up to experience and live with it. That gave me one account I still had to send money to, and another account I didn’t have to pay on for the better part of a year. All in all, about equal since neither charged interest. Just inconvenient.

Those Who Forget History,.. Repeat It

About a year later, I got into financial difficulties and was struggling to get out. One of the creditors I worked with (I’ll call him SCUM for sake of this argument) told me that if I sent a series of post-dated checks, they’d hold them and cash them one-at-a-time until they were gone.

Sounded good at the time, so I sent in a series of checks all post-dated and in order, and planned my budget accordingly. Soon, I found that SCUM had gone ahead and cashed all the checks at once. Luckily I had the money in the account, now I just had to figure out how to do things like pay the rent and eat until my next payday.

Another call to the bank (after not getting ANY word back from the 4 calls to SCUM I made) and I was reminded of something.

• Via the ACH system, neither names nor dates are verified before transferring funds

But something else I learned.

• A wrong date on a check isn’t an actionable item.

Meaning, that I could have put Dec 41st, 1655BC and they still would have cashed the check. And there was nothing I could do about it. The recipient was correct, so there was no fraud involved (in the bank’s eyes). I was out the money and that was that.

SCUM got his money, all at once, and probably got a nice little bonus for it. I got a cleaned out bank account, pending bills that got paid late, and a couple of weeks of Mac-and-Cheese and cheap noodles for meals. That lesson, I remember!!