Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: allisolm
I cannot imagine that somebody can call my bank and say "I've got a check from skoorb for $2000. Does his account have that money? Here's the account number.". No way they'll give that info out.
Give me your account number and I'll check it out.
Actually, you can do just that. They won't give you a balance or information about account holders or anything like that, but they will tell you if they can cash a check from that account for that amount at this time. At least that is true where I bank.
Yes, I've had the same thing happen.
When I was in college, we used to eat a lot of chinese food (delivery), because it was open late. Anyways, there was this one guy, (that was practically a roommate because he was always in the room, although he lived down the hall), but we all chilled and played video games together. Anyways, I often ended paying for the chinese food, because they would only take cash, and this guy would write me a personal check. Maybe I was a dumbass, but anyways, after the semester was over, I took the checks to the bank they were drawn on (not my bank), and asked the teller if I could cash the checks, and explained the situation (the "roommate" assured me before that there was enough money in his acct, but I wanted to make sure). The teller told me that I could, and I got my money, although I ran into him sometime later and he mentioned getting hit with a few service charges, but he wasn't upset, since it was his responsibility there anyways. (Edit: Now I remember - he mentioned getting service charges for
other checks that he had written during that period, because he was terrible at balancing his checkbook, and had forgotten to account for the money that he had owed me for chinese food. It wasn't a lot in total, a number of smaller amounts, but enough that I thought I should cash them, anyways.)
I would hopefully assume, though, that the bank would have to have the check in hand to take a look at it, I would be surprised if they would give you the info over the phone, although there are a number of "electronic check clearinghouse" services for merchants that do exactly that, check account balances online. Nor would I assume that they would offer someone's account balance out - what if you had been given a signed, blank check? That would just be a bad scene.
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