Banks and dishonoured cheques

It is encouraging to note that our local banks have found the moral fibre to voluntarily stand up and be counted with regard to dishonoured cheques.

It's all very nice to note that if a customer has three dishonoured cheques in a month the banks will tell the customer he is a naughty boy and this behaviour has to stop.

Meanwhile, a shopkeeper somewhere is out of pocket. Not the customer who was fraudulent, not the bank who gave him a current account and cheque book but Charlie the grocer down the road.

If Mr Customer continues to be a bad boy the banks will think again. He now had six dishonoured cheques a month, perhaps the bank lent him money to pay his debts, or even took his cheque book away and closed his account.

Guess what? Charlie the grocer still has not been paid.

Very nice, very correct. How about something effective? How about a national database of defaulters or a name and shame campaign? How about a black list that disqualifies fraudsters from owning a cheque book?

It can be quite simple really; you default using a Bank A cheque book and the debt remains unpaid for more than two weeks (four weeks - the longer the moratorium the more people get stung) then your ID card number and defaulter status get circulated to all commercial accounts.

Data Protection Act, civil rights, I hear you shout. All very nice but I bet a month's wages that the defaulters' list will shrink like magic. Just remember the other guy's the rogue and above everything else Charlie the grocer, who has spent hours on the phone trying to recover his money, still has not been paid.