 Keep Cheques Alive
I'd like to suggest a campaign where the Consumer Action Group can flex it's muscles.
Do you still write cheques for goods in shops? If not then you are contributing to an ever increasing policy of shops discontinuing to accept cheques as a form of payment.
Imagine this scenario. You want to buy some food or petrol. You have no money in your account and your credit card is maxed out. The only way you can feed your family or get to work is to write a cheque. By the time the cheque hits your bank, your wages will have been paid in. Every thing is hunky-dory. Only one problem though, in Shell garages, you cannot pay for fuel using a cheque. I have heard of some supermarkets no longer acepting cheques.
What are you going to do now when your bank balance doesn't allow you to buy food or petrol with your card?
The excuse that shops give for not accepting cheques is that as so few people use cheques as a form of payment, it is not worth the hassle of having to present the cheques to the bank for payment as there are so few. I suspect that the real reason is that when we pay for goods using a card, the money is transferred immediately. With a cheque, it will take a few days to get to the shop's bank. This is to our advantage as the money stays in our account for a few more days earning interest.
As an Action Group, we can simply start using cheques to pay for goods to keep the cheque system alive. Even better, when I try to buy goods with a cheque and find out that the shop no longer accepts them, I simply ask the assistant to inform the shop manager that their non-cheque policy has just lost them a sale. I then walk away. I suggest that we all do the same.
Does anyone have any opinions on this? Should we, as consumers, allow shops to dictate to us how we pay for our goods? Are we allowing banks to charge us what they want? No longer!
Who is the most powerful person in the retail world? The Consumer is. Shops ignore what we want at their peril.
Here's a list of shops who no longer accept cheques. Can you add to it?
Shell garages, Next, Tog 24, Game Station.
__________________ Don't let the fatherless chillen get ya! 
Barclays - settled in full £4799.38 
| 
Re: Keep Cheques Alive 
