In message , Jack Taylor
writes

That's similar to the various preserved railways that I am a member of. The
treasurers receive membership fees by direct credit, with the membership
number quoted as the payment reference. The membership secretaries receive
the renewal forms, with the direct credit option ticked. The treasurers (I
presume) periodically confirm the latest batch of payments that have been
received by e-mail to the membership secretary. It's hardly rocket science
and it's far more secure for both parties.

You're right, it's not rocket science, but as you suggest it, it would
cause for us, a number of people more work. These people are all
volunteers so I'm not inclined to be some sort of a job creation scheme
for them.

I'm afraid that, if that is the attitude, then I wouldn't be bothered about
being a member. I've already discontinued my membership of one preserved
railway that I had been a member of for over twenty years, due to their
inability to embrace modern technology (ironic as they are one of the bigger
railways, whilst the smaller ones that I am a member of can function
efficiently).

shrug

You're obviously not that interested in being a member if you can't even
manage to raise a cheque once a year.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)

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

On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 02:08:29AM +0100, Steve Fitzgerald wrote:

You're right, it's not rocket science, but as you suggest it, it would
cause for us, a number of people more work. These people are all
volunteers so I'm not inclined to be some sort of a job creation scheme
for them.

The two model railway groups I'm a member of, where the treasurers and
membership people live at opposite ends of the country, have found that
accepting modern payments saves them a lot of hassle. They do still
accept payment from Luddites, but I'd not be surprised if in another
couple of years they impose a surcharge on cheque payments. One of them
accepts card payments online and paypal, the other hands out its bank
sort code and account number so people can do BACS.

You're obviously not that interested in being a member if you can't even
manage to raise a cheque once a year.

You mean that the organisation doesn't care much about its members if it
insists on them using such antiquated and inconvenient methods. Perhaps
more importantly, it doesn't care about its officers if it makes them
traipse to the bank every few days to hand over silly pieces of paper.

--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world

I think the most difficult moment that anyone could face is seeing
their domestic servants, whether maid or drivers, run away
-- Abdul Rahman Al-Sheikh, writing at
http://www.arabnews.com/?article=38558

In message , David
Cantrell writes

You're obviously not that interested in being a member if you can't even
manage to raise a cheque once a year.

You mean that the organisation doesn't care much about its members if it
insists on them using such antiquated and inconvenient methods. Perhaps
more importantly, it doesn't care about its officers if it makes them
traipse to the bank every few days to hand over silly pieces of paper.

You have no knowledge of our operation and are therefore unqualified to
comment about how we choose to operate our business.

To put this into some sort of perspective from our side of things:

We operate a membership system where members have to submit a
'requirements' form on renewal. This is because we offer something
approaching 100 varieties and combinations of product and the member has
to indicate their preference for the year. With any system we use, that
member would still have to submit to me a list of their requirements
before I could renew their membership. This is because that is what our
members prefer.

I have spent much time attempting to find a better way of dealing with
this, but the bottom line is still that members would be required to
communicate with us twice to renew - once with their requirements and
once with the transmission of funds and all this would have to be
re-assimilated once we received the two items - so, why not do this
once, altogether with a 24p stamp?

To use the banking system as it stands (ie. Giro transfers) costs us 96p
for every membership we receive in this manner. With around 2000
members that is a lot of money that could be put to better use for the
group. Then the paying in slips (which also include the above mentioned
requirements) have to be posted from North Wales to me for action as the
bank won't send then direct to me, adding to the cost. It costs us 40p
to bank 100 cheques; I have never been to the bank with these yet, I put
them in the post with the multitude of other items I have to send out.

So, until we (read I as I'm the only one apparently interested in
achieving a better cost/benefit in this matter) establish a better
system, we will continue to prefer cheques. Of course, this could all
change next month, year, whenever as it's kept under constant review.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)