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Cheque please!

A

Anonymous

Guest
I remember reading some years ago, about cheques and how the banks can except them, apparently by law, if you write a cheue in a blank piece of paper, if all the essential details are there the bank isnt allowed to refuse it, i think it was in FHM and they presented there bank with a cheuque written on the side of a cow, and they refused to take it. even though they could of excepted it and cashed it.

Is there any truth in this? i mean is there any truth in being able to write a cheque on anything and the bank should except it??

( for our american friends, a cheque is a bit like a check but not as good! )
 
Yes it's true :)

I remember the article, and the bank staff got a bit ratty about having to process the details on the cow as they were hard to read, but they have to honour details of a cheque regardless of if they're written on a piece of paper or a stone.

The same applies to posting something, as long as it's got a legible address and is stamped accordingly, the post office have to process and deliver it, but as normal they do draw the line at something stupid like an elephant because, lets face it, posting an elephant does take the micky :)
 
yes the postage one does work! i bought a DVD from australia via the web, it came with my details just shoved inside the dvd covers, with a stamp on it, although funny not very practical!
 
Regardless of what the snopes article states, in the FHM article they took a cow into a bank and cashed it in K
 
Wasn't there mention in FT sometime ago about a farmer who owed his bank some money so he wrote out a cheque on the side of a pig?
 
schnor said:
Regardless of what the snopes article states, in the FHM article they took a cow into a bank and cashed it in K
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i remember it well mate, some people take snope too seriously. it even made the ten o clock news.
 
I can say from personal experience that it was possible to use non-standard cheques in the 1980's. The campaign against nuclear power had blank anti-nuke cheques that you could use to pay your electric bill as a form of protest. You filled all the details from your regular cheque book in, and sent them off. The idea was that they would screw up both the electric companies and the banks processing systems.

I think people may have tried the same with the Poll Tax, but it certainly wasn't something I came across directly, and I was very active in the campaign. I wonder if banking regulations/laws were changed as a result of the earlier campaign?
 
Snopes is a US-centric site, which means, for it, the World is from the Pacific in the West to Atlantic in the East :)

In the UK, it's still perfectly legal to cash a cow, large cardboard cheque or anthing else made out to a payee as long as the details are correct and the funds are there. The RSPCA do take a dim view of passing cows through the magnetic ink readers in banks however.

8¬)
 
As I recall the story it was a farmer who owed money to either the Inland Revenue or the VAT (Customs and Excise) and it was done as a publicity stunt to hightlight the foolishness of the rules regarding the assessment of the tax or duty concerned.

It was a stunt with the added bonus that if the department concerned refused the "cheque" they would have a devil of a job prosecuting for non-payment.

The original story was amongst the collection of stories by A P Herbert called Misleading Cases based hence the publicity stunt mentioned in Snopes. Herberts stories did always use real case law which he took to the point of absurdity.

Sorry :(
 
Peewee said:
I agree, It seems people nowadays believe anything they read on a webpage.
I mean, come on! How hard is it to make a webpage pretending to know everything in the world?
Click to expand...

http://www.snopes.com is the best site on the planet for debunking of urban legends. The owners, David and Barbara Mikkelson, are probably the foremost experts on urban legends in the world, next to possibly Jan Harold Brunvand. All their articles are very well researched and they are not "pretending" anything. :)
....and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

sureshot
 
sureshot said:
http://www.snopes.com is the best site on the planet for debunking of urban legends. The owners, David and Barbara Mikkelson, are probably the foremost experts on urban legends in the world, next to possibly Jan Harold Brunvand. All their articles are very well researched and they are not "pretending" anything. :)
....and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

sureshot
Click to expand...

Snopes is reliable, but not always. they have as in this case been wrong. its naive to believe everything you read on snopes as they often make mistakes. and admit to it!

i have just dug out my old issues of FHM and in the August 1999 issue they take a Cow with a cheuque written on the side to barclays bank in the hope to cash it. i will scan a picture and the article and email it to snopes.
 
post edited to fix bad link

Seems to me that if you seek information only from those sources that never make mistakes, you're limiting your sources to - um, no sources at all. Everyone makes mistakes. The honest ones admit it and update their findings. snopes does this.

Snopes himself cautions against using his or any other website as the final authority on any subject and encourages readers to to check their facts wherever they may find them. See this page in his whimsical "Lost Legends" or "T.R.O.L.L." section.

Nonny
 
Okay, I just did a Google search, followed by a Dogpile search, trying to find more information on this whole "cow check" incident. I used both the US and British spellings. I used "both Check/checque on the side of a cow" and the shorter and simpler "check on a cow."

Basically, all I found was the snopes page. The closest I found to another reference was this site. And lots of references to farmers and vets checking on pregnant or sick cows.

Using the British spelling I got no hits at all. Anybody else want to try to find another source?

Nonny "chequing her facts - and they bounced" Mouse
 
Their sources:

Herbert, A.P. Uncommon Law.
New York: International Polygonics, 1935. ISBN 1-55882-107-4.

Wansell, Geoffrey. "Cash on the Hoof for A.P. Herbert."
The [London] Times. 27 August 1990.


Here is an Amazon page on the book.

Nonny
 
Peewee said:
another case of the blind leading the blind :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

OK, so why don't you do some research on your own and then come back and write an article for us about it? :)

sureshot
 
Dunno about a cow, but I certainly remember tabloid newspaper stories in the enlightened 1970s about cheques being written on the midriffs of 'bikini girls' who were led to bank tills by various wags who attempted to pay them in, much to the discomfort of bank staff.

There was a short craze for this and there always seemed to be a newspaper photographer present.......
 
Okay, here's a thought - if the snopes page is wrong because they lack this particular information, has anyone actually sent them the information so they can check it out and update the page again if necessary? They've already done so once in the presence of new information.

Incidentally, the author of the book I cited was a guy who went to a great deal of trouble trying to cash one of these cow checks for a publicity stunt - in England. As you'd know if you'd read the whole snopes page, including checking his sources.

Do you have the name of the guy in the story you read? How recent is the story? Any other cites for it besides this one magazine? Can anyone post a scan of the article?

They guy the snopes page refers to definitely had some trouble cashing his cow. The bank didn't have to do it - which snopes interpreted as the point of the UL.

Personally, having read the page in question including his update at the bottom, I think it should say "sort of" instead of plain "false", but that's not my point (and that opinion stems from his information, not some other source.)

Which is that you have two, count 'em, two sources (ignoring for the moment the aforementioned tabloid stories) and you're assuming one is wrong simply because you believe the other to be right. Without more facts on your other source, I'm not in a position to accept the said assumption at face value.

It's not the specific UL itself I'm interested in, but the phenomenon snopes cited in the first page I linked to. You're placing a lot of faith in one source, which I haven't seen, and dismissing another because of it - in some cases, without having actually seen the source being considered as more reliable.

Just trying to be a good skeptic....

Nonny
 
I read the article MR C is talking about, and though FHM isn't the New York Times, they don't just make stuff up.
It could be that they were inspired by the UL on snopes to actually see if it could be done.
 
That thought had occurred to me, chatsubo. Wouldn't be the first RL instance of a UL after the fact. In fact, the snopes pages are full of such instances. (Including a rather grisly one about a real baby in a microwave...:( )

Again, how recent is the article? Can I get a date and page number?

Looks to me like this is a case of the site needing an update, not its info being wrong per se. The info they have is just on a much older case.

Stands to reason that one couple running a massive website (requiring much research) as a hobby might miss one magazine article here or there.

Nonny
 
Peewee said:
To be honest Im not really that interested in the matter and I believe that it has already been shown to be true.
The only reason I go involved here was to voice my opinion of Snopes... It aint worth the server space it takes up. Mind you I dont think it would take much, It looks like it was designed by a chimpanzee.
Click to expand...
So why waste time giving your opinion on Snopes here? Why not go to their site and tell them? Not only are they happy to receive opinions, suggestions and advice, they quite often take action on them. Give it a go!
 
More sources, also not mentioning the FHM article.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_352b.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-20434,00.html

http://zolatimes.com/V5.1/promissory_cow.html (this is the false story from the book snopes cited)

Still having no luck finding anything on the actual FHM article... Hampered by the fact that the FHM website does not appear to have a search engine.

(I got the brit spelling of "cheque" wrong on my first search. Kept wanting to slip a C in there....)

Nonny
 
Good work Nonny!

(although my faith in Cecil's abilities has been somewhat shaken;) )
 
Let's face it, Claw, a source is only as good as its sources. Which is my problem. If the FHM article is legit these other sources should be informed - and I can't inform 'em if I haven't checked out the article myself, now, can I?

Spending entirely too much time on this - should just get a cow of my own and try it.

Nonny
 
Nonny drop me your email and ill send you the article i have it scanned including pics ready to email snopes when i can be arsed lol.

Try searching the web for articles that have appeard in FT, if you dont find them does this mean they dont exhist? ofcourse it does :D

Mail me at [email protected] and ill send them back.
 
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