Is the cheque cleared?

I do seem to attract some unusual kind of shit when it comes to my finances: On April 25 I made a withdrawal from Party, to be sent by cheque ($995). On May 5 it arrived and on May 7 I paid it into my Citibank account. Three days later, there it is, sitting in my account.

Now, I assume you have heard about scams where people assume that this is the end of the matter, and thus release the goods to the person making the payment, only for the cheque later to fail to clear at the issuing bank.

But what could go wrong with a cheque from Party?

This:

Dear Mr Birks

You recently had a cheque deposited to your account to the value of $995.00.

Our clearing bank notified us that the cheque was lost while in the process of being presented to the issuing bank. We therefore will be debiting your account for the unpaid cheque.

We kindly suggest that you contact the issuer and request a new cheque be sent directly to us for clearance. Also ask the issuer to have the old cheque stopped.

Which I reckon merits a genuine WTF????

Note the phraseology "the cheque was lost" as opposed to "the clearing bank lost it".

So, I telephoned Citibank to find out the name of the Clearing Bank and, luckily (as it transpired) it was the same bank as the issuing bank. In other words, Barclays sent me a cheque. I paid it into Citibank. Citibank sent it to Barclays, which lost it while presenting it to itself and (and here's the classic) then wanted to charge me a $35 "Stop Fee".

So I emailed Paytech and informed them that I thought it a mite unfair to charge me $35 for a mistake by their own bank. And you kind of have Party over a barrel here, because you only have to mention the words "financial journalist" "listed company" and "US regulator" to be fairly sure that PartyGaming will be shitting its pants.

And, all credit to them, within three hours I got an email back saying that the $35 fee would be "waived".

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( Gibraltar pictures )