I deposited a check from an individual the other day and the check came back "Refer to Maker". What does this mean? It had the proper endorsement and signatures. I have have deposited checks from him before with no problem. He is out of state and sometimes I have a difficult time reaching him. Any assistance would be appreciated.

"Refer to Maker" means you need to contact the person who wrote (made) the check. You won't know the reason until you talk to that person.

And to add: The maker may not know what it means either so they should contact their institution.

Example - The signature may be different enough from whats on file to be suspicious of the validity of the check.

There is a hold on the customers account balance.

The check is post dated

The written amount and figure amount do not agree

The customer had someone compromise their account and they had to close the account and open a new one. The bank is returning all the checks on the old account.

Another example - signer authorization has been revoked

I used to work for a super-regional bank that used that as a "catch-all" when a customers account was blocked/restricted for many of the reasons Don has named. At that institution, a customers account was usually blocked from activity if they were overdrawn for more than 30 days or if there was suspicion of fraud or if collections was exercising the right of offset for a loan or another account. Believe me...I never liked handling the customer calls when they recieved a check marked "refer to maker" because, at that institution, it was difficult sometimes to get a straight answer from the area that blocked the account.

I do not like the "refer to maker" stamp. It is the lazy way to do things and all it tell the bank of deposit and/or the payee who negotiated it is to go back to the person who gave them the check. In many cases, the check is stolen and the drawee bank has the account in a pending status.

"Refer to maker" means: We know what's wrong, but even though Reg CC requires us to tell you what's wrong, it also it has this little loophole, so we're not going to."

In addition to all of the reasons mentioned above, I have actually seen banks use it as the reason for returning an NSF check when the drawer was a "good customer" and they did not want to offend him.

It also cuts down on the number of rubber stamps you need and the possibility of stamping the check with the wrong one. We used 3 stamps, NSF, Signature Irregular, and Refer to Maker. Refer to Maker also lessens the banks liability as it minimizes the problem of having an item stamped with an incorrect reason.

I have also seen a small sticker that listed a number of reasons for returning an item. A box was checked for the reason. This resulted in more handling as the item had to be processed manually with the sticker attached to it. Plus in the zeal to get items processed you could not always tell which reason was checked.

Keeping it simple pays off in the long run.