MIG wrote:
On Jul 10, 7:52 pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:
On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:58 +0100 (BST), (Colin

Rosenstiel) wrote:
Except that the traders want payment with order.
Unless you are writing your guarantee card number on a cheque yourself
(which you're not meant to do), they are no more getting that with a
posted cheque as they are with a BACS transfer. In both cases one
needs to verify if the funds have cleared by checking one's account,
unless one is being very trusting.

My concern (and I think the one possibly referred to) is that unless
you attach payment to a specific order, how do they know who is paying
and what for?

Presumably by matching up their records based on incoming payments
logged against customer references. Numerous organisations (e.g. the
Inland Revenue etc.) will accept payment by bank transfers so in other
words payment does not accompany any form etc. filled in. Somehow they
manage to reconcile everything and obviously have an automated system to
chase up missed payments.

If I made an electronic transfer to pay for goods etc, I would be
concerned that if I got the reference wrong, the supplier wouldn't
know who had paid or what for.

That's down to you to get the details right then! If you wrote a cheque
out you could forget to sign it etc. and/or put the wrong reference on
the back or something. So if the cheque got returned to the supplier it
would still cause them extra work in trying to trace the missing payment
back.

--
Phil Richards, London, UK
3,600+ railway photos since 1980 at:
http://europeanrail.fotopic.net
http://britishrail.fotopic.net