Why that cheque hasn’t cleared after six days

SIR – It’s disingenuous of banks to say they now have a cheque-clearing delay of six “working” days (Letters, August 15). Those six days will inevitably involve a weekend, resulting in a minimum of eight days for clearance. Andrew M Courtney

Hampton Wick, Middlesex

SIR – I am also irritated by the length of time it takes for cheques to clear. It doesn’t help that there is no longer a branch of my bank near my home, so I have to make a special journey.

However, my bank has introduced a service that allows me to use my mobile phone to photograph the cheque and pay it in that way. I did this recently and it worked well (though clearing still took several days). Stephen Knight

Barnet, Hertfordshire SIR – I recently noticed at an ATM that my current account balance had plummeted. I went to my local branch of Halifax to find that a cheque I had written for £35.00 had been debited £3,500. I was put through to the bank’s fraud squad.

The payee remembered my cheque being put into a machine in his branch of Danske Bank. Apparently cheques are no longer physically transferred between banks but scanned in electronically – so presumably, in this case, Halifax’s reader ignored my longhand description of the amount and lost the decimal point in the 35.00.

In the end, the money was returned, but the incident could have been avoided if a human being had checked the scan. Peter White

Lisburn