cashing a US check

My husband recently received a check for a good sum of money from the US, and we have an online-only bank account, which when we asked HOW we deposit the money we were told nothing, other than that it can take up to 8 weeks to clear 

Has anyone found that it really takes the full 8 weeks for the funds to become available?? We don't exactly have the most money in the world and this check is badly needed...there was no other option available to us other than to have it as a check

We still have no idea how to fill in the paying-in slip, because its all in pounds sterling, the check is in USD...totally lost...and they give you no info on how to get hold of a real person rather than going through email, which is very frustrating, I don't want to keep emailing these people and trying to get the answers to the questions we asked.

Can't help you with the particulars of your online bank, but post 9/11, it can and often does take 8 weeks. Though this can depend upon how much the check is worth. My experience was with large student loan checks (thousands of $). I think there is a threshold on that, but no idea what it is.

Supposedly the extra time is for added security (money laundering/terrorism, etc).

You may have to ask them for a special pay-in/deposit slip. When I received my tax refund, Barclays had a special deposit slip for foreign currency. Barclays told me two weeks to clear but it was more like one week...of course it was a US government cheque so i don't know if that made a big difference.

it's in the thousands of $s

I've tried looking up the info from cahoot, contacting them etc...all they said was to make sure the check was in the name of the person depositing it.

The dumb thing is they no longer seem to actually exist as cahoot, their parent bank abbey national has stopped selling credit cards or loans through cahoot, and everything else seems to go through abbey national.

They didn't mention any special paying-in slip, they just completely ignored the paying-in part of the email.

Almost wishing now the money never even came, it's taken months to get here to begin with, so we thought the waiting was finally over.

If you can't deposit it through your on-line bank account, perhaps you can see about opening a bank account at one of the main banks? I have been able to deposit American cheques into Barclays, Natwest, and HSBC; it does take around a few weeks (depending on the amount and how quick the bank is), but they do tend to send a letter in the post letting you know when it has gone through. I am sure you can get it sorted, so you can still be happy about the money.  :)Good luck.

we thought about opening a new account, but they will require good credit at most banks, natwest completely screwed us over so that's not an option.

I'm learning a bit more about why it takes so long, we're going to see if we can ask for negotiation rather than sending the check through collection...if they negotiate the funds clear in a few days, if it's sent for collection they have to send it to the original bank and clear the funds, get it sent back in the foreign currency.

US isn't a high-risk country so they should be willing to do negotiation on that part, but the check is for about $3k, so I don't know if that's considered 'high value' or not....high value is also sent for collection.

Sounds like either way I will be waiting, lets just hope our landlord is understanding, this sort of ruins a lot of plans including my daughters birthday.

Usually most banks will allow a basic account even if there is credit problems. Still though there is a good chance it will still take the eight weeks although the last time I deposited a US cheque it was close to eight weeks. 

I just found out the company sending the check could have solved all the problems by asking that the check be issued in ££s! 

That doesn't help me though as its already been sent. We're going to ask that the bank tell us whether or not they will send it for collection or negotiation. We meet all the criteria for cahoot to send through negotiation, but it's 'at their discretion'...well, it's also 'at their discretion' to charge us if we go over our overdraft, which we did once or twice and were charged each time...what do you want to bet they wont choose to do what may help their customers though? 

I hope that you get your money as soon as possible; when I have deposited my student loan cheques in the past it has taken as little as a week to as much as six weeks. I will be keeping my fingers crossed for you.

thanks, looks as though it's going to be a long cold fall...if we had had an amount that would have been under £1000 after currency exchange and fees they would use negotiation...however since it's not they will be sending it for collection, which they've told us is 4-8 weeks.

We really needed that money for a variety of reasons as mentioned before, add to that the embarassing situation that I have been wearing maternity clothes for about a year and a half now, or my husbands clothes...some of that was going to get me the clothes I desperately need as well.

So tired of dealing with all of this