Comment by patmcc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patmcc | Hacker News Reader

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>>The only things that are checked are the digits of the amount, and the account number.

Ha! Not even that. In the cheque clearing process, about the only thing that ever gets checked (even by automated processes) is the MICR line (account/transit and institution number).

Everything else (EVERYTHING ELSE) is just assumed to match whatever the person entered at the ATM/image capture app/teller window. The bank considers it your problem, as the cheque writer, to catch any issues on your next statement, and then they'll review the image of the cheque (in many jurisdictions now, the physical cheque is destroyed pretty early in the process). You should really never ever give a cheque to someone you don't trust. It's pretty silly, but that's the reality.

Although, fun fact, it's the cursive amount that is the 'official' one if there's a mismatch between that and the digits, since it's much more difficult to subtly adjust that.

Source: work for an institution that processes literally millions of cheques (I'm not in that area, but yeah).

Came here to say this. The "spelled out" amount takes priority if there's a conflict in the two values.

Also worth noting, it doesn't need to be in cursive. I spent all my life struggling with writing in cursive on checks (because it's pretty much the only place I ever do it). One day, someone told me I could print it (it just never occurred to me that this was acceptable) and I've been much happier ever since (during the, you know, 10 times a year I actually write checks).

I'm down to 4 checks per year now. City and County taxes, twice per year. For some reason the local government still uses a credit card processor that adds 3% on top of whatever you pay, and when you're talking about property tax that's painful. The stamp is much cheaper.

I've been printing the amount for years now, as my cursive was never terribly legible to begin with and has decayed from lack of use. The whole point of that field is to make it so someone can't just add some zeros to the end of the value. Just write the value out and draw a line through the rest of the field.

Is this hyperbolic or do they actually add 3% on to your amount? If so that is just disgusting. I can understand it from ticketek or similar, but from a government body?

They are charged with collecting the given amount of tax, not the given amount minus a fee.

Better than my apartment building's utility provider (for water and such) -- any payment, even if you're being so direct as to be foolish by sending cash through the mail, incurs a 7% fee.

The government doesn't handle CC purchases directly, they hand it off to a third party. The third party passes on all of the CC overhead plus a bit for themselves to you. It's small government in action.

Yup! I worked for a property management company that was rolling out check scanning (X9 imaging, not ACH/ARC) to 150 locations. In every group that was rolled out there was inevitably at least one person that would scan a batch of checks and enter the amounts really incorrectly.

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