When Cheques are Stolen

Last week Mrs. C8j and I found out that our son’s school had been a victim of theft (from their main office). The school is private, and we pay the fees with post dated cheques. All of the cheques (from all the students) along with a quantity of cash was stolen from the office. What happens when cheques are stolen?

The school informed us of the theft right away, and told us that we should cancel all the post dated cheques (a good security measure to take in all circumstances similar to this), and they supplied us with a Police Case number, to give to the bank. The school also said that if we were charged any fees for canceling the cheques, the school would reimburse us, however, they also told us that one parent had already checked that Scotiabank was waving any fees in this situation.

I trundled off to my local TD branch, to extricate more money from my daughter’s RESP (this time fairly quick, but I had to go to the branch to do it (and include a proof of enrollment)). While I was there the Rep I spoke to also took care of the cheque cancellations. She was not sure at the time how the fees might work out, so I left unsure of whether this was going to cost me money or not, but I found out on Sunday the importance of following up and watching account balances closely.

I looked at my account and saw the following:

9/11/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT FEE	$         12.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT		$       120.50
9/12/2013	STOP PAYMENT		$          4.50
	Totals	$       137.50	$       125.00
	Total fee paid	$         12.50

As you can see there are 11 stop payment charges, however there was only 10 cheques that needed to be cancelled.

Resolution

I called the Easyweb folks, and after a little bit of sleuthing by a helpful young lady on the line, we found that yes one cheque had been cancelled twice (must have been an extra nasty cheque), so another refund was given and now we no longer owe anything for having the cheques cancelled. Good on TD for finding the error and fixing it.

Remember if you don’t ask the answer is always no, so it never hurts to ask if fees can be waived in exceptional situations.