Foreign cheque issue

[northandy]

So the story is I received a cheque for 11k usd for the sale of some shares, cheque was very slow so I emailed the bank in the US through an online portal and a week later it arrived 4 weeks after the shares were sold (no response to the email) anyway I pay it in and that's that. That was about 3 weeks ago. On Friday another cheque arrived, so I emailed the issuing bank on saturday.

Today I get a call from my bank saying the original cheque has been returned unpaid, so they want to debit my account. However they are going to debit based on today's buying rate, so there's a £300 difference between the amount I received and the new amount they want to take from my account.

Has anyone had anything like this happen?, I have questioned it with my bank, and they are looking into it.

[northandy]

Looks like that's a no then. Ha ha

[Leebo77]

Possibly something in the T&C's of your account on this.

To avoid this in the future, it would be best to ask your bank to send the cheque 'on collection' rather than through the clearing. This means that the cheque is sent to the drawee bank (outside of the clearing process) for them to honour and make a clean cash payment which would get credited to your account. They may charge a fee for this but on 11k it's probably worthwhile. Once funds are received, they cannot be debited back off of you.

[northandy]

Tried that, theres very little in the t&c of the account about foreign cheque cashment, as for the type of cashment it's a consideration for next time, wasn't aware you could request different types.