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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

The oddest thing to me is that they went months without noticing that they had $50k+ more than they expected to in their bank account. Not that it was their job to keep track of Tesla's financials (Tesla clearly screwed up badly), but with a purchase that large I'd be watching my bank account like a hawk until the check posted.

Edit: oops, forgot how cashier's checks work.

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The Reddit post makes clear that they didn’t. They’d paid with a cashier’s check, which means the money was withdrawn when they wrote the check.

Tesla then never cashed it. That’s on them.

If I made a $50k cashiers check and it goes months without being cashed I want a notification from my bank.

It's essentially cash. If you hand someone $50 you don't get a notification if it's not deposited.

It’s not though, it is a bank essentially holding my funds in escrow for payment to a specified party. If that payment is not executed I want to know.

Cashiers checks are not traditional checks that only withdraw funds on deposit.

A casihiers check debits the money from you account on issue. As soon as the bank gives you the check, the money is out of your account. A cashiers check cannot bounce for this reason. Its why it or a wore transfer are the required payment type for large purchases of this type.

This was not paid with a check, but a cashier's check, and so the money would have already been gone from their account:

From the post:

> The car was paid for with a combination of card and CASHIER’S check. Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed. so no, we did not notice extra money sitting in our account because it had already been withdrawn.

It was a cashier’s check. The money comes out at the time the check is written.

> the car was paid for with a combination of card and CASHIER’S check. Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed.

from the post

When you buy a cashier check, IIRC the money comes out at the time of purchase (whereas a counter check does not).

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