? to anyone who has won a $$ league on CBS Sportsline.com or banking professionals?

[Capital]

My bank, Wachovia, returned my fantasy league winner check from CBS Sportsline.com. I have won leagues and received checks from CBS in the past and have never had any deposit problems. Wachovia's reasoning the a few days ago was that the CBS check only included the routing number and not their bank account number at the bottom of the check.

I contacted CBS and they said that their account numbers have never been on the check and, like I said above, Wachovia has always accepted their checks. I'm not sure why Wachovia would even care because the check is not drawn on one of their accounts. My understanding is that it would be a JP Morgan Chase issue because they need to access CBS account.

Anyone else have any problems? I'm going back to Wachovia tomorrow to have another conversation.

[KevinNU7]

I've never heard of a bank turning down money

[molson]

You might have just gotten a dumb teller. A lot of times with stuff like this, just find someone else to talk to, and you're good.

[Butter]

I used to work in accounting at a bank, and I don't know what the bank would do with a check with no account number on it. Wachovia certainly sounds like they did something reasonable here... because without an account #, there is no way for them to tell the issuer of the check (the bank it's drawn on) from which account it was drawn. So it would naturally reject. However, if the check indeed had no account number on it, you still could possibly go to a branch of the bank that the check is drawn from and cash it directly there, but even then that bank might have trouble with it since there's no account number.

There must be some special deal going on that someone's not telling you about if indeed their account #'s have never been on their checks.

[Toddiec]

I agree with what Butter is saying. The bank can't accept it without an account number because then we can't get the funds from the originator. It is better than the alternative which would be if they had cashed/deposited it and then it came back no account number they would have just taken the money right back out of your account. Always better to catch it before that happens though. Customers tend to get a little snippy especially if they have written checks on those funds.

If you can get a copy of the check take a look at the MICR line (the black line of characters at the bottom of the check) and make sure there are no gaps. Normally if there is a check that does not have an account number on it there will be a large blank in the middle of that line where the acct # should be encoded. Those MICR lines should have four sections (routing #, acct #, check #, and amount in that order) which are seperated by some wierd looking characters. Take a look at your personal checks for an example.

Hope this helps!

[Capital]

Unfortunately, the original check was deposited and then rejected (of course costing me a $10 fee - an yes I was a bit annoyed). It was only when I went to redeposit the check, because I thought it was for insufficient funds, when the teller caught the mistake.

The order on this check, is Check Number, Routing number (9 digits), blank, and then dollar amount.

I contacted CBS again, and now I can fax the check to someone in their AP department. I hope this can get resolved. I cannot imagine that I am the only one.

[Toddiec]

It sounds like they just encoded a bunch of checks and forgot to put the account number on them. Some large business will just buy a ton of checks with only the routing # pre-encoded on them so they can then code the acct # on them when they cut checks depending on which account they want the funds to come out of. The good news is that they should reimburse you for any costs incurred because of thier mistake.....but as to if they will or not I couldn't tell you. But they should darn it! Good luck!

[Glengoyne]

It sounds like they just encoded a bunch of checks and forgot to put the account number on them. Some large business will just buy a ton of checks with only the routing # pre-encoded on them so they can then code the acct # on them when they cut checks depending on which account they want the funds to come out of. The good news is that they should reimburse you for any costs incurred because of thier mistake.....but as to if they will or not I couldn't tell you. But they should darn it! Good luck!

Yup. Someone in IS forgot a line or two of code. CBS should absolutely make good on the fees. Their check was returned.

I used to deal with checks in a bank, preparing the nightly federal reserve deposit. I'm surprised they didn't process it. Your bank doesn't need the account number. All it needs to do is route the check to the originating bank. The originating bank has to deal with identifying the account number, and it seems like any bank dealing with a commercial account like CBS would do what it takes to process the checks.

[BillJasper]

Unfortunately, the Check 21 legislation has changed a little bit how banks handle items (I've worked in an Item Processing division for the last eight years).

If your bank has an 'Image Exchange' relationship with Wachovia the item in question would automatically reject off of the Sorter (all Image Exchange items MUST be full field to be accepted by the 'Image' file). The Reconciler would have to write the item up as either non-negotiable/missing and send it back to the branch or to a 'Day Two' department (as they can not add in the item manually without the account number).

Thus ends today's lesson in the mind-numbing minutiae of banking.

[Glengoyne]

Unfortunately, the Check 21 legislation has changed a little bit how banks handle items (I've worked in an Item Processing division for the last eight years).

If your bank has an 'Image Exchange' relationship with Wachovia the item in question would automatically reject off of the Sorter (all Image Exchange items MUST be full field to be accepted by the 'Image' file). The Reconciler would have to write the item up as either non-negotiable/missing and send it back to the branch or to a 'Day Two' department (as they can not add in the item manually without the account number).

Thus ends today's lesson in the mind-numbing minutiae of banking.

My banking knowledge is obsolete. Image Exchange sounds pretty cool. I'm guessing that means that banks with such a relationship don't have to physically pass paper back and forth. That is pretty cool. If that is the case, does the Fed still act as a clearing house for the images? I'd guess the alternative is that the instutions with such relationships could be connected directly or over a network of sorts.

See not too much minutiae. I'm just wondering how hard it is to kite checks now.