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Home >> Checks/Money Orders >> Checks You Wrote
Check Too Big for Potato Chips; Any Recourse?
My husband inadvertently wrote a check for a $3.23 bag of chips as $323.00 in the numeral line and "Three twenty three and xx/100" on the written line. Our bank stated that the check was paid as $323 to the merchant, but the merchant says her bank says it only deposited it and credited her at $3.23. What can we do?
We can show the merchant our cancelled check and account statement, but if she says her bank did not credit her in that amount, do we have any recourse or is it a $320 lesson? Is there anyone that can investigate what her bank deposited since we dont have access to her account records to prove otherwise?
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 It used to be possible to say that the merchant got credit for the amount encoded at the bottom of the check. However, in the era of check imaging, that's not such an easy call to make.
If the amount in words had been correctly stated as "three and 23/100," you'd have a strong case for having your bank initiate an encoding error claim, because that's the controlling amount when there's a difference between the words and numerals amounts entered on a check. However, it's clear that the check had the same wrong amount in each place.
Without some form of legal action -- which would probably be more trouble and expense than it's worth -- there really is no way you could compel the merchant to prove how much she received for the check. This, unfortunately, will probably end up being an expensive lesson in how not to write a check.
Published on BankingQuestions.com 8/22/08
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