Here's a case of a common sense law that didn't change with the times. This law makes perfect sense in the 1890's when someone could cash a cheque written in Ottawa that was then cashed in Toronto when during horse & buggy days communication between the banks might take weeks. The failure is in that this law has not changed since the telegraph,telephone,fax,airmail,email,satellite communication,and twittering was invented. How many other outdated laws are there that we have to worry about that haven't been changed in the last 100 years. That would make a good/scary show.

Stop payment on a cheque means that NOBODY should be able to cash it. What good does it do the consumer if you cant actually 'stop' a cheque from bein cashed? Furthermore that law is bunch of BS - plain and simple. If companies can still withdraw money from a pre-authorized account just by changing the amount, that is just negligence and stupidity on the banks part. But as well all know and may have experienced at this point, banks dont care about the customer, they only care about their profit margin.

Money Mart did the same thing to me about 15 years ago. It was for $50. I ignored them. They harassed me for a year with letters full of misspelled words. Apparently, they harassed the guy who ripped me off too, and he blinked first.

Actually contacted you guys at the time, never got a reply...

As an altrnative to new legislation to protect those who place "stop payment" orders on cheques it might be be more effective to get our banks to recognize and promote the practice of issuing "crossed cheques".


To quote a recent edetorial in the Vancouver Sun "Crossing is a proceedure that is routine in much of the world , but little known here though it is allowed under federal legislation that sets the rules for cashing cheques.


....you can protect yourself by "crossing" any cheque you issue so that it can only be cashed by a bank, credit union or trust company. You can "cross" a cheque by drawing two straight lines between adjacent corners...Banks could help their customers by issuing cheques that are preprinted with such crosses"

Here is another eye-opener. I had a certain amount taken out of my checking account each month to pay for belonging to a fitness club. The club kept changing the monthly payment so I put a stop payment for them on my account. The monthly withdrawal was $20.00, which I cancelled with my bank and paid $l2.00 to my bank for this stop payment. The fitness club, after trying to withdraw the $20 for two months was stopped by the bank. However, they then simply changed the amount to $25 and the stop payment did not work. They were able to bypass the stop payment simply by changing the amount. I then cancelled my account and opened another one. I had to go to quite a bit of trouble in doing this because I then had to notify everyone that I had authorized to debit my account.I would be very careful in authorizing anyone to debit my account in future.

We have the same problem and are going to court in July 09. After seeing this I am think not to wast my time and just pay Money Mart.

Rome

There is one fact they left out of this report. When the guy took the cheque to Money Mart to have it cashed, it would not have had 'PAYMENT STOPPED' stamped on it at that time, because the cheque was presumably lost. That stamp was put on the cheque AFTER Money Mart would have cashed it and deposited the cheque. And Money Mart does not have access to the banking system to find out that the cheque had a Stop Payment put on it.

They were cashing the cheque in good faith (both from the company that wrote it and the person cashing it). The real problem is the guy who cashed it, because he knew there was a stop payment put on the cheque.

How do we know the company didn't put the stop payment on the cheque AFTER it was cashed? That is what the Bills of Exchange Act is trying to protect against.