I Am Not a Crook
I don't write a whole lot of checks anymore. One of the usual places I have a burst of them is at Westercon and Worldcon, as I typically pay my voting fee/advance supporting membership and conversion fees by check. I also had to write a check to Lisa's osteopath last month, as he doesn't take insurance or credit cards.
While I was at Westercon, I got a call from the doctor's office telling me that my payment had been returned. They e-mailed me the bank document: "Account Not Found" was on the check. What?
I looked more closely. The blood drained out of my face. It was a check from an older account that I'd closed some years ago. Then I realized what had happened. I'd forgotten to throw away the old account checks (printed the same style as my current account) and during the move from California to Nevada, they'd gotten mixed up with my current checks. The check to the doctor was the first one in a new pad.
I e-mailed the doctor, explained what I'd done, profusely apologized, and promised to get a money order/cashier's check to him for the original payment plus the fees after the holiday weekend. (I got it mailed from Marysville on Monday.) He thanked me for being honest and ethical.
There was one other check I'd written on that account in the last month: my PO Box renewal. I left a message at the Post Office, but they've not gotten back to me. I hope they haven't closed my box in Sunnyvale!
That led to the other problem: I'd written checks throughout the weekend to Westercons, Westercon bids, and dealers, all of whom were friends of mine, and I didn't have any good checks, even though I had a bank account with plenty of money to cover the payments. Lisa told me that I could use the "household" account (normally used only for groceries and other Fernley-specific things), whose checkbook I'd accidentally carried with me as well and that had a handful of checks in it to cover the bad checks.
I spent a chunk of Saturday afternoon tracking down everyone who I had paid on Friday and Saturday and shame-facedly replacing payments with ones that wouldn't bounce.
In the end I think it all worked out okay. I guess I'm lucky that Lisa's doctor's office was working over the holiday weekend and let me know about the banking mistake so I could get it settled and avoid a bunch of returned-check fees.
While I was at Westercon, I got a call from the doctor's office telling me that my payment had been returned. They e-mailed me the bank document: "Account Not Found" was on the check. What?
I looked more closely. The blood drained out of my face. It was a check from an older account that I'd closed some years ago. Then I realized what had happened. I'd forgotten to throw away the old account checks (printed the same style as my current account) and during the move from California to Nevada, they'd gotten mixed up with my current checks. The check to the doctor was the first one in a new pad.
I e-mailed the doctor, explained what I'd done, profusely apologized, and promised to get a money order/cashier's check to him for the original payment plus the fees after the holiday weekend. (I got it mailed from Marysville on Monday.) He thanked me for being honest and ethical.
There was one other check I'd written on that account in the last month: my PO Box renewal. I left a message at the Post Office, but they've not gotten back to me. I hope they haven't closed my box in Sunnyvale!
That led to the other problem: I'd written checks throughout the weekend to Westercons, Westercon bids, and dealers, all of whom were friends of mine, and I didn't have any good checks, even though I had a bank account with plenty of money to cover the payments. Lisa told me that I could use the "household" account (normally used only for groceries and other Fernley-specific things), whose checkbook I'd accidentally carried with me as well and that had a handful of checks in it to cover the bad checks.
I spent a chunk of Saturday afternoon tracking down everyone who I had paid on Friday and Saturday and shame-facedly replacing payments with ones that wouldn't bounce.
In the end I think it all worked out okay. I guess I'm lucky that Lisa's doctor's office was working over the holiday weekend and let me know about the banking mistake so I could get it settled and avoid a bunch of returned-check fees.