Card transactions by proxy

[Peter Mitchell]

Roland Perry wrote  on 5-04-11 10:16:
> In article <4D9ACC33.3020902 at callnetuk.com>, Peter Mitchell 
> <otcbn at callnetuk.com> writes
>> If it's like my local HSBC branch, yes you can. These
>> machines have built-in OCR/scanners allowing you to feed in
>> the Bank Giro Credit slip and your cheque, and the machine
>> reads them and somehow pays the money over from your
>> chequing account into the collection account via Giro (whatever that 
>> is), and prints you a receipt. You don't need to have an HSBC account 
>> or a card.
> 
> Where do you get the Giro Credit slip from, for Council tax?

 From the paybook, silly ... Ah. I see the problem :) Once 
again I assumed that other boroughs are like mine.

> One of my Credit Card providers stopped printing a Giro slip on the 
> bottom of the statements a year ago "to save paper". although there's 
> still as much paper, just a saving of ink in the blank space where the 
> giro slip used to be. I can only pay them electronically now.

The scamps.

I have a Santander credit card account. Their statements do 
come with Giro slips attached. These slips nominate a 
collection account owned by Santander Credit Card Services 
at Bank of Santander itself. As it happens I also have a 
Bank of Santander current account (nee Abbey). So, I 
thought, I could pay my Santander CC bill by writing a 
cheque on my Santander current account, going to my local 
Santander branch and handing the Santander cheque and 
Santander giro slip over the Santander counter to a 
Santander teller who could then pay it into the Santander 
Credit Card Services account at Bank of Santander.

But no. That's not possible. Santander don't allow it.

So I had to pay either electronically, or by posting them a 
cheque. They've got a special new wheeze to discourage the 
latter method too: they hold onto the cheque for three weeks 
before presenting it, so they can add late payment charges.

It's goodbye Santander ...

-- 
Pete Mitchell