The Gaming Den

fbmf wrote:

Maj wrote:Most of the utilities and government agencies around here don't accept credit or debit cards and writing a check is like having a receipt on the customer end.

I don't write many - I just ran out of the checks I ordered in 2001 - but I needed to order more and there are very few options for side tear. Everything's torn off the top.

This is my experience as well. I'm about to reorder checks from an account I opened in 1999.

Game On,
fbmf

Cards are one thing, but not having a bank account I can wire money to? As the IRS? WTF?

Writing a check doesn't mean I can document that I sent it. I have no proof that I put it into the envelope I mailed, only that I mailed something.

the IRS will setup automatic bank account deduction no problem. I owed them a ton of money last year, and they take 200 a month automagically.
Really the IRS has no problems taking electronic payments in form of an ACH.

My co-worker had to pay USD 1'000 (she dropped the US citizenship after that, so it was the last payment). There was no way to pay other than check according to her.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p3611.pdf
your co-worker was full of shit
http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=97400,00.html

Lierally 3 minutes of googling.

I'll pass that pdf on to her.

She could not use that way to pay since she had only a "temporary social security number".

Fuchs wrote:She could not use that way to pay since she had only a "temporary social security number".

SSNs aren't temporary. Is she talking about an ITIN?

sabs wrote:the IRS will setup automatic bank account deduction no problem. I owed them a ton of money last year, and they take 200 a month automagically.
Really the IRS has no problems taking electronic payments in form of an ACH.

And see... Here's where checks win: they're cheap to process.

Checks (you write them), and ACH (payee writes them) both use the same information - your bank's routing number and your account number at that bank. They cost a business/organization/government/whomever about $0.05 to process per transaction.

A debit card - the card that's connected to your bank account and "debits" from it - costs a flat fee plus a very tiny percentage of the purchasing price (0.05%) to process but is still somewhere just above $0.21 per transaction.

A credit card - a card most frequently marked with Visa and Mastercard logos (but there are others) - is usually processed based on a percentage of the purchasing price. Smaller retailers usually pay a higher percentage (closer to 2%) than larger retailers (closer to 1%). Sometimes there's a lower percentage, but an additional flat fee per transaction.

Note: Debit cards very frequently have Visa and Mastercard logos on them because you can use them like a traditional credit card even though there's no extension of credit. You can run these cards either way - PIN transactions are processed as debit cards, signed transactions are processed as credit. If your bank has usage requirements (Chase did - 5 debit transactions each month), or offers rewards (Paypal does - credit transactions get cash back) you have to make sure you use the card "properly" in order to hit the requirements.

Wiring money... That generally costs the payer, rather than the payee, a ton of money ($10 is great price) - which explains why we don't do it much.

Checks require no special equipment to process them, are relatively secure, and are cheap to process. That's why we still use them.

Fuchs wrote:Writing a check doesn't mean I can document that I sent it. I have no proof that I put it into the envelope I mailed, only that I mailed something.

Who the hell cares? If you mail a check to Place X and they don't receive it, you can go to your bank and say, "Check number 441029352934 went missing. Please stop payment so random Joe doesn't take my money." And they do.

I have had checks go missing twice in my 18 years of banking, and both times, the companies the checks were mailed to were more than happy to give me extra time to make my payment because I could give them a check number, contact info to the bank, and the stop payment information. Now, I think most places would just take my bank info over the phone and write the check themselves so it wouldn't have to be mailed.

I have never lost money because of a check. I have had my debit card [number] stolen six times, though. And while I eventually recovered the misappropriation of funds, I had a horribly skewed financial situation while the entire affair was being sorted out.

Maj wrote:

Fuchs wrote:Writing a check doesn't mean I can document that I sent it. I have no proof that I put it into the envelope I mailed, only that I mailed something.

Who the hell cares? If you mail a check to Place X and they don't receive it, you can go to your bank and say, "Check number 441029352934 went missing. Please stop payment so random Joe doesn't take my money." And they do.

I have had checks go missing twice in my 18 years of banking, and both times, the companies the checks were mailed to were more than happy to give me extra time to make my payment because I could give them a check number, contact info to the bank, and the stop payment information. Now, I think most places would just take my bank info over the phone and write the check themselves so it wouldn't have to be mailed.

I have never lost money because of a check. I have had my debit card [number] stolen six times, though. And while I eventually recovered the misappropriation of funds, I had a horribly skewed financial situation while the entire affair was being sorted out.

It's not about losing money - it's about proving I paid on time.

As far as costs go: Mailing a check costs me over 5 dollars just for postage stamps - that's the fee for sending a letter where you get a recipt that it was sent and when.

Checks will fade out. Electronic payment will take over - and soon. The USA seems a bit behind the times, but I doubt they'll stick to checks when Africa is switching to electronic payments through phones.

Fuchs wrote:It's not about losing money - it's about proving I paid on time.

<shrug>

I've had the same number of problems getting companies to accept that I paid electronically for something as I have with checks. For people who don't write down their confirmation numbers, I imagine this can pose problems.

You can write down your confirmation number all you want - how do you prove there was a check in the letter you sent? Mail can go missing. The clerk at the receiving company can drop a check without noticing when filing or opening a letter.

I've never had a hassle with wiring money. I could even do it without leaving my home, which is a lot more convenient than heading to the post office.

At the end of the day checks cause more work and take more time than electronic payment, so convenience and ease of use will win out.

Fuchs wrote: I've never had a hassle with wiring money. I could even do it without leaving my home, which is a lot more convenient than heading to the post office.

Wire transfers fail all the time. I have had to resend four wire transfers since coming to Europe, which is almost once a year. In the US, they pick up mail from your house, so you don't have to go to the post office unless you've run out of stamps or envelopes.

And that still doesn't get to the bottom line: which is that checks are cheaper than electronic transfers of any kind. By several times, even when you include the price of the stamp and envelope to send the check.

Wire Transfers are simply a shittier way of doing things. The amount you write is not less, the system is less secure, and the price of using it is considerably higher. There is a lot you can say for the convenience of debit card transactions, but that only works if you want to send money to a corporation and not a private citizen.

-Username17

I pay less. I don't have to go to a post office, I don't have to pay a stamp, and I have receipts that prove my payment.

And no matter what, people will pay with their phones soon enough, so checks will go the way of the dodo. Any electronic payment system that is already good and easy enough to be used in Africa, where the infrastructure is much worse than in the US, will be good and easy enough to repolace checks in the US.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Have you ever been to Africa? People use cell phones to send money because people don't have bank accounts, don't have addresses, can't receive mail, can't receive email, and quite possibly can't read. They have pre-paid phone time and they send that back and forth to each other even though it's a pain in the ass, has monstrous usage fees, and is laughably insecure (in that anyone can just take your phone and have all your "money" sent anywhere they want).

That system isn't "coming soon" to North America, we have contracts and bank accounts and fraud protection and shit.

-Username17

Why do you think people used to paying online will keep using checks and snail mail? People already use smart phones and tablets for online shopping and banking.

All you really need is to combine an electronic payment service with a messenger system into one app, coupled with bluetooth and/or a gps service, to make picking the shop's adress faster and easier, and you have the phone that acts as a purse.

Fuchs wrote:Why do you think people used to paying online will keep using checks and snail mail? People already use smart phones and tablets for online shopping and banking.

All you really need is to combine an electronic payment service with a messenger system into one app, coupled with bluetooth and/or a gps service, to make picking the shop's adress faster and easier, and you have the phone that acts as a purse.

And for just $400, you can pay your $30 phone bill!

Dude, people already pay for things with their iPhones and Androids. This is in no danger of replacing checks because a majority of people don't own those things. Yes, PDAs are becoming more common, and in another couple of decades they will be cheap enough to actually replace cell phones. And it's possible that in that time someone will come up with an "app" that is as secure and cheap and traceable as a personal check. I personally am not holding my breath.

-Username17

Honestly, my bank lets me pay online. I create a payee, put their name, their address, and I write them effectively a free cashier's check, which my bank mails for me, free. It is pretty damn awesome.

I can also do 1 or 2 bank transfers a month for free. So, if i have limited need, I can do that.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Fuchs wrote:Why do you think people used to paying online will keep using checks and snail mail? People already use smart phones and tablets for online shopping and banking.

All you really need is to combine an electronic payment service with a messenger system into one app, coupled with bluetooth and/or a gps service, to make picking the shop's adress faster and easier, and you have the phone that acts as a purse.

And for just $400, you can pay your $30 phone bill!

Dude, people already pay for things with their iPhones and Androids. This is in no danger of replacing checks because a majority of people don't own those things. Yes, PDAs are becoming more common, and in another couple of decades they will be cheap enough to actually replace cell phones. And it's possible that in that time someone will come up with an "app" that is as secure and cheap and traceable as a personal check. I personally am not holding my breath.

-Username17

People use e-bay and shop online. Do they write checks for those purchases? No. People are using electronic payments.

Smart phones are already cheap and will be getting cheaper. Decades? No. Much, much faster than that.

Fuchs wrote:People use e-bay and shop online.

So? When 310 million people in the US use e-bay exclusively, we can start talking about checks going away.

In 2009, the entire internet commerce sector of China was a bit under thirty seven billion dollars. In that year, the total GDP of the country was a bit over four thousand, nine hundred billion dollars. Putting all electronic commerce at roughly three quarters of one percent of the economy. Now in the US, the e-commerce sector in 2009 was substantially bigger - about three hundred billion dollars when you include ad clicks and shit. Of course, the US economy was also bigger overall than the Chinese economy - coming in at a bit over fourteen thousand billion dollars. That makes the US way ahead in electronifying their economy - at about 2%.

Yeah, things are moving quickly or some shit, but electronic shopping was invented in 1979 and in the subsequent 33 years e-commerce has managed to go from 0% to 2% of the economy. Feel the blistering pace of technology!

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: Dude, people already pay for things with their iPhones and Androids. This is in no danger of replacing checks because a majority of people don't own those things. Yes, PDAs are becoming more common, and in another couple of decades they will be cheap enough to actually replace cell phones.

I thought smart phone penetration was already near 50% in the U.S. 53% of mobile users are using smart phones, and apparently 46% of all American's own a smart phone. If you take out the people yelling at you kids to get off their lawn (13% smartphone usage) then the numbers ought go well above 50% already. I'm actually a minority for my age group because I don't have a smart phone (71% from age 25-34 do).

In 10 years it's gonna be damned hard to get a phone that can't be called a smart-phone in today's market.

Source: http://calvinayre.com/2012/03/02/lifest ... ical-mass/

FrankTrollman wrote:

Fuchs wrote:People use e-bay and shop online.

So? When 310 million people in the US use e-bay exclusively, we can start talking about checks going away.

No. Checks will go away far faster than that. Once you are used to pay electronically, why use checks anymore? How many checks do you actually use anyway, per year? How often do you pay electronically?

Theres an annoying thing about Firefox I've had for a while but never got around to looking into.

I used to be able to press the up and down arrows keys to scroll the page. However, some indeterminate time ago so I can't remember what changed, pressing the down key moves instantly to the bottom of the page. To actually scroll the page I have to click some text in the page at which point the vertical text cursor appears which I can move with the arrow keys. Its bullshit and frustrating and I want it to end.

Why did it change? How can I change it back? It still scrolls with the arrow keys normally in Chrome so its probably not the OS.

I'm using Firefox 10.0.2 on Mac OS 10.6 in case that affects it, but this was also happening in Firefox 8 & 9, and probably in 6 as well, as I said I can't remember.

A lot of the time you can fax checks. My bank has a system where you can send them a high-res photo of a signed and validated check marked as 'delivered via internet' and they'll count it as deposited.

So, we might have both. It might boil down to putting the app on the bank's side, and we just use our cell phones to send them photos of the checks we have acquired through the mail.

I still don't understand the necessity for checks when most services automatically just type in the routing and acct number.


When i worked insurance sales (6 years ago), we did exactly that. I actually had one dude who refused to give me his credit card or bank acct information. Since we only get paid our sales bonus upon money delivery, as a salesman, I'd rather they get it over with then and there. I only needed the routing and acct number, so I had him send me a check for the specified amount via fax and I'd use that. Just copied the routing and account number off the check and then shredded the thing up.

His reasoning for not giving me the info was because that I could use it to defraud him and steal all his moneys. I tried to explain that this could still be done if he sent me a check. But he wouldn't listen. In retrospect, telling a customer that I could steal his moneys despite any precautions that he took would have truly been a bad idea.

Cynic wrote:His reasoning for not giving me the info was because that I could use it to defraud him and steal all his moneys. I tried to explain that this could still be done if he sent me a check. But he wouldn't listen. In retrospect, telling a customer that I could steal his moneys despite any precautions that he took would have truly been a bad idea.

with a check you have a signed legal document you can make a copy of and the payor gets your information back with the canceled check.

there is a paper trail. the law likes a paper trail.

it is also harder to prove that someone didnt approve of $X being paid electronically versus a forged check.