posted on September 22, 2000 03:43:36 PM
Have any of you sellers ever received a post dated check in payment of an auction? I had a lady send me a check fourteen days after the auction ended, and it was post dated until the 26th. That sure sends up a red flag, eh?
posted on September 22, 2000 04:20:58 PM
Muriel - I have had buyers send them with permission after auction closed and like you just send them. Since on ebay we hold checks till clearance in 99% of cases. You haven't lost anything except maybe a few extra days to make the deposit. Send up a red flag, Not In My Opinion although I would email to clarify that it was a post date and that funds will be available if the item is deposited on that day. I would also email to confirm with the buyer that the item won't ship until the check clears. The alternative email the buyer that you can't complete under those terms and file for FVF in a manner that makes sure the buyer doesn't get a NPB Alert and relist it. Both take the same amount of time from an ebay perspective and one saves relisting.
posted on September 22, 2000 04:41:07 PM
I initially offered to accept post-dated checks. A lot of people always seem to be waiting for their Friday paycheck fix. No one ever took me up on it, but many seemed to have one excuse or another to delay sending payment. So knowing they get paid on Friday they prefered to add four or five days to the process. I have no check clearance delay. Duh!!! Apparently this was too complex for bidders to accept.
Anyway, I no longer accept post-dated checks unless someone asks first.
posted on September 22, 2000 04:50:17 PM
With regard to holding checks; it makes no sense to me to hold a check for ten days. What I do is deposit the check, and then wait seven - ten days to see if the check cleared. (I have a separate checking account for eBay auctions only.) Waiting to deposit the check for ten days has always baffled me.
posted on September 22, 2000 10:01:16 PM
Why take personal checks at all?
After notifing winner, receiving their e-mail reply, waiting for the check, depositing it, waiting until it clears, then scheduling picking or dropping off shipment. Two to three weeks have gone by.
Promote BillPoint and Paypal strongly on your auction and for those who don't trust their credit cards numbers online accept money orders or cashiers checks only.
You will see your turnaround time, from auction end to shipment sent, fall to 4 to 6 days.
posted on September 22, 2000 10:27:17 PM
yup I find this to be fact you can do away with the personel check option and hardly a buyer will even blink these days.
you want the buyers anyhow not the bidders and the few that must use a check will ask l clearly in there reply to you if it would be ok
really good buyers ask all the Question of the seller and know how to make there needs known directly to the seller in there email reply, the silent one are the ones to watch out for.
I would write and ask the buyer about the post dateing since they should have told you there reason for this frist even if you have a bank account just for auctions if they post dated cause the money wont be there till then you will still get charged the return fees and so wont they some alert tellers who take notice wouldnt even let you make the deposit of this check.
if the buyer tells you they post dated cause the money wouldnt be there till then might want to let the buyer know in most states its against the law to even post date a check for which there is no funds.
WWW.dman-n-company.com
posted on September 22, 2000 10:33:22 PM
Actually, the notion of "post-dating" a check is pure fiction!
Go down to any bank and ask them if putting the date on a check further away than today's date will make any difference in cashing it to them. It won't. They don't give a damn about it. So just treat it like any other check.
I have never heard of people holding checks for 7 to 10 days BEFORE depositing the check.
Maybe you are confusing when a person says "I hold checks 7 to 10 days to clear," to mean that they are really holding onto the checks. This has always meant (in my opinion) that the person will not ship for 7 to 10 days to let the check clear.
Just because your bank has released the funds in your account doesn't mean that the check cleared on the other end.
The only way to see for sure if a check has cleared is to actually call the bidder's bank to see if the check has cleared. I don't know anyone who would do that. So to be on the safe side, I hold the item for 7 to ten days and then ship.
Many people accept post dated checks. Under offical bank regulations, it's tech. illegal to write one. (But I think the police have much better things to do than chase after post-dated check writers)
As far as a bank is concerned, a check that is post dated is not a valid check. So the truth is, the seller has not offically sent you funds until after the 26th. Or another way of looking at it, the check is worthless right now.
I would be very concerned. At the very least, this is a bidder that didn't even ask you if they could send you a post dated check.
I would send them a "nice" email stating that you received their post dated check, and ask them why they sent it.
Or just say "nicely" that next time please ask first before sending a post-dated check.
I would be more concerned that the bidder is kiting checks (spelling?) This is were a person has checking accounts at many different banks. They then take check A for $500 for bank B and deposit the check. Then they write a check for $600 and deposit it in account A. A person can build up a large amount of money this way without having any money at all.
Professional's that do this, then withdraw the balance and run. All a teller has to do to stop this is put a hold on one of the checks being deposited, and it all falls appart.
The other group of people who kite checks are people who just don't have a grip on their money and are trying to pay Peter by robbing Paul.
Oh, and don't forget to start YOUR hold on the date the check is good.
Kelly
[ edited by kellyb1 on Sep 22, 2000 10:34 PM ]
[ edited by kellyb1 on Sep 22, 2000 10:35 PM ]
posted on September 22, 2000 11:49:05 PM
A friend of mine works at a bank and she told me that a bank will allow deposit of a post-dated check. However, and I post-date checks all the time for myself, if anything happens to my acct...and it has....then you can get a copy of the check with post date and no charges can be made to your acct. (overdraft/Insufficient Funds etc.) If you post date a check and it is cashed by any bank it is that institutions fault and negligence. The date on a check is the date that the check (your contract IOU) becomes valid. When depositing several checks you can get by this...on one occasion when I received a post date check and tried to cash it I was told NO WAY.
That wouldn't work at my bank (a large national bank). I once received a post-dated postal money order. It turned out the clerk who generated it bumped the month lever.
I never imagined that I would need to check the date on a postal money order so I deposited it. 3 days later I got it back in the mail along with a note that my account had been charged a $15 fee for submitting a post dated item for deposit. I then took it to a post office where she had to contact the business center. They had to go through the steps to verify it wasn't counterfeit. Then she cashed it. As for recovering the bank fee for their mistake... "Sorry"
