Missing Cheque

[Teamedup]

I have rather a large value cheque that has got lost in the post. I rang my bank and tried to stop it. They insisted that I had to go to the gendarmerie and report it as missing.

Off I went and the gendarme said that I didn't have to do this. Then the gendarme found a form for me to fill in and then his boss came along and said that the forms were out of date and I shouldn't have gone there in the first place.

I was very annoyed when I got home an hour later. The bank has now stopped the cheque, it cost 11. However I have to pay this amount every six months for the next three years if I want this stopped cheque to remain stopped. So I asked what happened after the year and eight days that french cheques are valid for. The girl said that the date was easy to change and ofcourse people change things on cheques here without the alterations being initialed and they go through OK. I just hope that the cheque turns up and I can cancel the stop on it.

[IAN_S]

I had a 2000 euro cheque go missing in the mail and I explained this to my bank, Credit Agricole du Midi, and they duly stopped it. I expected a charge as in the UK but noticed a debit and a credit amount of 12.90 on my statement, in other words they had cancelled the charge!
Having seen all the criticism about French banks, CA in particular, I was quite impressed.