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Admin
best minimal discourse instance ever
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Why not?? Every car I have purchased for the past 10+ years has been paid for with a personal check. I have never been to a car lot, or even dealt with a personal seller that would not accept one. They just phone the bank to verify that the funds are there and start the transaction. They are as good as a cashier's check, if you follow the proper protocol.
Hell, the first car I ever bought I had to get a bank loan for. It was a small hometown bank and I called up the banker that my family always worked with. He told me to just write a check for it and then when I got back to town I could sign the paperwork (I was 3+ hours from home at the time). Those were the days... Now it takes hours of paperwork and days for approval.
Admin
When we started to get larger clients, we had to start accepting credit cards for this exact reason. The execs would use their company AmEx to pay invoices, just so they could get the miles for their personal use.
Company AmEx's are TRWTF. They require the employee to personally guarantee for the company. If the company goes tits-up with a large balance on your AmEx, you are the one responsible. I frequently wonder how many people signing up for them know that?
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I've never seen our corporate credit cards; only financial staff are allowed to use them. But then I've never really needed it; all our travel and accommodation for business trips is bought for us ahead of time. (I do tell them what to book for me, of course. Duh.)
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Makes me wonder what is too hard to pre-purchase by the finance department, but is too expensive to just have the employee submit an expense report.
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Don't know. Our lot can get pretty much anything if given enough time (there are limits over which additional authorization is necessary). Purchase orders for “normal” stuff, the credit card for other things. Conference fees are often the most awkward thing to sort out, as it's not like you're usually dealing with a fully professional outfit like Ticketmaster…
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I used to have one. If I used it, they paid AmEx directly for approved expenses. It was slightly more convenient for both me and the company than using my card.
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Obviously because a 24 hour clock is only right once a day! :trollface:
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I thought @chubertdev was talking about linkedin?
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hmm... maybe. i did make a buttumption there.
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There's something weird going on. I've never bothered requesting one so far, but as I've heard they do have the major benefit of not having a limit, so you can stay in 7 hotels over a week and don't hit the limit on the reservations.
Though as others have mentioned, it's in your own name, and like with normal expenses you have to pay (or be liable to pay) everything yourself first then hope you'll get it back.
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Just get yourself a $20k limit. If you hit that with hotel costs, you're staying in quite astounding hotels. (I've never even got close, even with the one week I was in a 5☆ boutique hotel in downtown DC…)
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A big pile of cash!
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Thanks to Know Your Customer laws you won't be able to do that in the US--most stores won't take more than maybe a couple of thousand dollars.
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A bank cheque has already been paid for. The funds have already been debited. It cannot bounce. I would take a bank cheque for payment for a car if I were selling, and would expect anybody else to do so.
A personal cheque can bounce even if funds were available when it was written. I would not take a personal cheque when selling a car, nor expect a private seller to do so, unless I knew and trusted the person I was dealing with, in which case Y U NO BANK TRANSFER? The only exception would be if I got hold of the cheque, deposited it and confirmed it had cleared before the buyer picked up the vehicle. I would not do that if I were buying because I want to take the vehicle with me when I pay for it.
That's a neat trick. Write a bad cheque and hope it comes good before it's processed. If you and your bank guy knew and trusted each other you could do that. I don't trust my bank to get loans processed quickly.
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It only really works with a small bank, where the person actually taking the decision on whether to extend the loan really knows the customer already. OTOH, a large bank is rather less likely to go bust when the economy is a bit down [spoiler](inb4 2big2fail)[/spoiler] as the additional size helps to buffer most problems. The overarching problem is that the good features of one model are directly counter to the good of the other…
Admin
Yeah, well, the last vehicle I bought was from a private seller (we never buy new, only ~2 year old vehicles) and he had no problem with a personal check. He verified funds and signed the title. I have no doubt that he went straight to my bank and withdrew the funds. Oh well. Point being, he took a personal check. The vehicle before that was a car lot (owned by a close friend) and they took a personal check also. Not exactly inexpensive vehicles either. Lexus LX470 and Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited.
Side note: At age 22 I bought a Corvette off of a friend, while drunk at a poker game, with a personal check. He told me that if the check cleared the bank I could have it (for loan payoff, which was 60% of book value).
Admin
Not a bad check. The loan was processed. I just needed to sign the papers. The money was already in my account...
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That was the key. Small bank, with the name of our small town in their name. Same banker my family had used for many years. I never expected it to go that smoothly at ~18-19 years old. Now I am 35 and realize that those days are long behind us. I still get personalized service at my bank, but nowhere near as good as that...
Admin
The whole personal check ecosystem is based on fear of swift and serious reprisal. If you don't trust that those are good enough, then just hold the transaction until the check clears. The banking industry knows better than most of the IT industry that up front authentication and pre-verification cost more than they are worth. That's why there is still a four digit PIN on most debit cards and you don't have to even sign for small credit transactions.
Oh, and most of the Nigerian Prince scams nowadays involve bank checks that bounce - weeks after they clear.
Admin
I suspect things are different between here and where you are.
If I sell a car to the kind of person who would write a bad cheque that car probably doesn't have the same value anymore and I don't want it back. Also, I suspect things are different between here and where you are because here you can't just steal a car and call it repossession. The reposessee (is that a word? I just made it one) must consent to the repossessor taking the car. Or you can get a court order and then after a while maybe some more court orders, eventually you might get an enforcement order to bring police and shit, and it's not worth the time and money for a car that's probably trash by now.
That depends on context. The bank knows who you are and you know that difficulty getting loans and credit cards can make life difficult so fraud rates are low and the bank can wear the risk for some transactions. Are you going to tell me that Google should not ask for your password to allow access to your email? Apple shouldn't authenticate access to your nudie pics?
Yes, international cheques are something different again.
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Damn right.
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You are arguing that buyers don't take personal checks for large transactions, but a lot of us have made large transactions by personal check. Personal checks are good for two things - sending money through the mail and large transactions. In both cases, a check provide some protection for the buyer from being ripped off.
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It's not easy to predict what things one culture / society will (or should) be afraid of and will avoid. But I think we can all agree that we wouldn't take a personal check from an Australian.
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Their grea-great-great-great grandfathers were fucking thieves, so that explains that.
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Reminds me on something I read about car rental around here: Apparently, when the car is returned, they check it on 15-20 separate items whether it's the same car.
Apparently based on real issues where people would rent a car for a day, replace the near-new engine with a 200.000 KM one, and return it.
Admin
The evil ideas thread is :arrows_counterclockwise: :twisted_rightwards_arrows: :arrow_left: over there.
Seriously, though, you really should post it there.
EDIT: Never mind, I'll do it.
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http://www.sickipedia.org/racism/australian/bloke-a-crime-is-getting-so-bad-to-teach-the-134625
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Blocked by the network fascists that don't believe I'm a grown adult or maybe that I should be working instead of slacking on the clock.
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Everyone's great-great-great-great grandfather was fucking someone or other at least once, by definition.
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Maria Mother of Christ allegedly didn't.
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In a few generations, that won't necessarily be true any more.
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.... if you look at historical records from the time "immaculate conception" or "Zeus/other-god-or-goddess seduced me as a swan" was an all too common excuse for a pregnancy resulting from extramarital copulation.
granted most of those were in the greek and roman city states but they still were around at the time and fairly well accepted.
everyone knew what you really meant but pretending to believe the story allowed everyone to save face.
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Bullshit, the Catholics are just extreme optimists.
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Well ... I got two replies out of it :trollface:
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Most sane people realize that, at the very least, prophets and guys performing miracles were a dime a dozen in the eastern Mediterranean ~2000 years ago....
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also that Jesus is not and never has been caucasian.
that one is always fun to pull at baptist gatherings.
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To paraphrase Jim Jeffries: "He was a short, Arab, Jew. He looked like Super Mario."
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Southern Baptist, I presume? Because the American Baptists are smart enough to figure that out on their own.
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it is most effective for southern....
i occasionally get bits on american baptist gatherings, but they're half hearted for the most part.
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At the southern Baptist churches I've been too, that troll wouldn't have worked either.
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Admin
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Congratulations?
Thanks for contributing, Neil Rashbrook, but the fact that one single elderly person in the universe doesn't use checks has nothing to do with the assertion I made, that checks only still exist due to elderly people.
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Don't worry @urkerab, @blakeyrat's assertion still isn't correct.
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This just may be a record. This topic has had not one single post about the actual content of the article. The only comment even meta-about the article, apart from @PaulaBean's OP, was @tar's comment based on the article being from 2014.
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And thus, the precedent for 2015 was established.
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Of course not. The fact that lots of non-elderly people use checks (in certain circumstances) and would find it rather inconvenient not to have that option does.
Admin
@accalia is correct, it was on FB
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and did i get the plugin right too?