PSA

[ewt]

419 scam targets music teachers - I don't think I would fall for this myself, but... meh.

Incidentally I always meet students before agreeing properly to teach them or accepting any forward payment.

Comments

[yady.livejournal.com]

It makes me wonder, is there a way to have a check checked before cashing it?

Also, does the fact that checks are hardly (if at all) used in the Netherlands anymore make Dutch people more or less immune to this kind of scam? (I would imagine that it'd make us less likely to fall for it, because the concept of 'cashing a check' is fairly unusual to us - even when we used to be able to pay stuff by check, I don't recall a way for individual people to cash them (I think you had to be registered as a shop to do so - not sure, I was 18 or so when they abolished them in favour of electronic payment).

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

In the UK you can pay - my bank wants £15 - to have a cheque specially presented which will check if the senders account has enough money to pay the cheque, but I'm not sure this will help if the cheque has been forged. I don't think you can do this for cheques from abroad.

I imagine that you can cash a cheque or a draft at the counter of your bank same way we do.
I find writing cheques still more convenient then paying someone electronically - electronically takes 4 days or more, sometimes screws up and doesn't go through and you need all their account details. With a cheque I just write their name and the amount. I find doing it online is convenient for anyone that you're likely to pay with any regularity. Otherwise they need to give you the account number and sort code and it's usually less hassle to write a cheque or be really anti-banking and just give them cash.

Shops and organisations have the ability to take your card or to ask to just take whatever is owed to them out of your bank account every month, but individuals don't have that ability. (I can arrange a standing order to pay a certain amount to someone every $period, but that's not quite the same, and there are the one off payments that take far too long and don't always seem to be 100% reliable. Of course I can electronically pay someone so that it arrives the same/next day, but that costs £23. Cheques and online banking are free).

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

The thing that always gets me is the cheque/draft being for several grand too much and sending them the surplus money back. I'm not saying I'd never fall for a scam (...asking for it!), but that bit always seems so dodgy.