I Am Not a Crook

[kevin_standlee]

I don't write a whole lot of checks anymore. One of the usual places I have a burst of them is at Westercon and Worldcon, as I typically pay my voting fee/advance supporting membership and conversion fees by check. I also had to write a check to Lisa's osteopath last month, as he doesn't take insurance or credit cards.

While I was at Westercon, I got a call from the doctor's office telling me that my payment had been returned. They e-mailed me the bank document: "Account Not Found" was on the check. What?

I looked more closely. The blood drained out of my face. It was a check from an older account that I'd closed some years ago. Then I realized what had happened. I'd forgotten to throw away the old account checks (printed the same style as my current account) and during the move from California to Nevada, they'd gotten mixed up with my current checks. The check to the doctor was the first one in a new pad.

I e-mailed the doctor, explained what I'd done, profusely apologized, and promised to get a money order/cashier's check to him for the original payment plus the fees after the holiday weekend. (I got it mailed from Marysville on Monday.) He thanked me for being honest and ethical.

There was one other check I'd written on that account in the last month: my PO Box renewal. I left a message at the Post Office, but they've not gotten back to me. I hope they haven't closed my box in Sunnyvale!

That led to the other problem: I'd written checks throughout the weekend to Westercons, Westercon bids, and dealers, all of whom were friends of mine, and I didn't have any good checks, even though I had a bank account with plenty of money to cover the payments. Lisa told me that I could use the "household" account (normally used only for groceries and other Fernley-specific things), whose checkbook I'd accidentally carried with me as well and that had a handful of checks in it to cover the bad checks.

I spent a chunk of Saturday afternoon tracking down everyone who I had paid on Friday and Saturday and shame-facedly replacing payments with ones that wouldn't bounce.

In the end I think it all worked out okay. I guess I'm lucky that Lisa's doctor's office was working over the holiday weekend and let me know about the banking mistake so I could get it settled and avoid a bunch of returned-check fees.

Comments

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I'm confused now. IIRC, the check you gave me is drawn on a CA bank has a Sunnyvalle address, and a fairly low number (< 200). It is packed in my luggage. Is it one of the good or bad ones?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Green background, WaMu account: good.

Train image, Bank of America account: bad.

We don't write many checks at all on the "household" account, and what you have is one of the original checks issued on what was then Washington Mutual (before Chase swallowed it when WaMu went off the rails) when we took advantage of their free checking for life offer. I still keep the Sunnyvale PO Box because I am in the Bay Area two weeks per month.

The other (bad) checks have trains printed on them, and also a Sunnyvale address. Eventually I'll use up all of the Sunnyvale checks from the good accounts and order new ones with the Fernley address on them.

[retro-rider55.livejournal.com]

- but you did pay him Tuesday for that hamburger...

[soon_lee]

Hope you don't get stung too badly by dishonored check fees/penalties.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

$12 for the return fee; $10 for the cashier's check from my bank. (I could have saved money by withdrawing cash and going elsewhere to buy a money order, but at that point I was running short on time, so I just ate it.

Presumably I'm going to have another fee from the Sunnyvale post office for the returned item and for renewing the box late -- possibly a box-reopening fee.

[buddykat.livejournal.com]

A lot of banks also sell money orders, and usually for a much lower fee - around $1 last time I bought one at the bank.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but not mine. I asked for a money order and was informed that a cashier's check was all that Bank of America would sell me.

[delosharriman]

That's a nasty thing to have happen, but hopefully you've already run to the end of the bad consequences. Meanwhile…
Financial Hygeine Measures, cont'd : shred any cheques as soon as you close the account they refer to!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The last of the consequences was yesterday, as I had to pay a collection agency for the check for my PO Box, with extra fees on top of the box rental. I've now shredded the dead checkbooks.