I WANT to share my experience of depositing post-dated cheques at the bank.

I had a cheque given to me on a Wednesday that was postdated to Thursday (two days’ difference). I was not aware that it was a postdated cheque and banked it in at a cheque machine.

When I checked my account online on the Friday, I found that the cheque had bounced and I was charged RM10 twice, first for banking in a post-dated cheque and second, for a courier.

Banks do a lot of stupid things, for reasons best known to themselves, but this one takes the cake.

If the RM10 was to fine me for making a mistake, they should themselves pay a fine for accepting the cheque in the first place. In fact, every time they make an error, they should pay the customer the fine. I can understand charging RM100 for a bounced cheque but not for banking in a post-dated cheque.

Then they charge me RM10 for the courier. I can get a cheaper courier without even trying.

And why in heaven’s name do they want to courier this cheque to me? Give me a call and ask me what I want to do with it (a 13-sen call, I might add), and the obvious answer would have been to bank it in again. Even non-bankers would know this.

The comedy of errors continued. When I found that the cheque had been returned, I called the telebanking line to find out what to do next. The person on the other end asked me to call my branch. I did not quite understand why she could not tell me what would happen to the cheque.

I was subsequently told by the bank branch that the cheque would be couriered to me within eight working days (courier — eight days? but that’s another story) and I could then decide what to do with the cheque.

In this age of Internet banking, do you have to wait for a courier that takes eight working days? Anyway, why can’t the person on the telebanking line give me this information?

KAMARUL BAHREIN SHARIF, Kuala Lumpur

Source: NST – October 3, 2008