Paper vs electronic record-keeping | Page 2 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

savemoresaveoften said
but the beauty of online and ATM is u don't need the actual person to access the account, so dont understand the bank's stupid adamant about no ATM or online even with a DOA. How do they even reinforce it ??  

They have cameras trained on the ATMs, so they can see that I'm not a 99 year old woman, if they should ever decide to monitor the account or investigate something. Also, I have noticed that there is a tendency to assume someone that age can't walk to get to an ATM.
As far as I know, my mother has never used an ATM.
And she has definitely never used a computer.
So, in this particular case at least, any attempt to use ATM or online would probably raise a red flag.
When we get the credit union account set up, I will try to link it to her big bank account. We'll see if that results in any flak.
I feel all of these routes are justified for me to use, but if they won't give me a code for her card or let me set up online, I can't do much. And they were very very clear about this! The suspicious part of me is starting to wonder if the reason they were so emphatic is because they DON'T have strong mechanisms for enforcement. If they hadn't already lied to me about their rules, I might not be thinking this way. Basically they make up the rules as they go along, from what I can see, even as they are dictated by their lawyers - or so they say. Maybe that's fake too.
Mum used to use telephone banking, but that would require me to claim I am her, which would be a problem. Also, they may have voice ID (as Tangerine does).

RetirEd said
Norman1 and Smeyer97: My cheques have all those protections (save for the rubbing ink and eradicator-develeoped tell-tales) and make non-carbon copies that stay in my chequebook. Ordinary statements from some financial institutions are usually on watermarked paper, often special letterhead with particular colors of ink. In any case, they are unlikely to be on the exact same paper I buy to print with at home. Some are printed on color lasers, but pre-printed letterhead is much cheaper for them.

I'm not sure how someone intercepting mail from a bank to me would even know what to alter to enable fraudulent or erroneous transactions. I'm basically concerned with the bank trying to alter records I can't disprove. I'd be happy with asymmetric-key encrypted PDFs if anyone were using them, though I'd keep multiple copies to guard against storage corruption.

Items like certificates and confirmations usually have more protection features. I've never had anyone try to use forensic confirmation on documents I brought to prove my version of events when disputes arose; it was literally "read it and agree."

Savemoresaveoften: This is just a chuckle, not a serious point: you typed "DOA" instead of "POA." It's hard to argue with a DOA* client.
RetirEd

*Dead on Arrival  

hahaha nice catch !

btw, it is indeed true that it seems like all online banks now require some kind of ID check at Canada Post, etc before you can finally open an account.

But for Simplii which my senior mom is opening an account, they do have the option of sending in a check with her name and address on it as proof.

So something like that will be an option to setup the online to facilitate the POA 🙂

@RetirEd you are making SO MANY assumptions... the fact is there ARE MANY gaps in the cheque processing process that makes it very insecure.

Interception can happen is oh so many ways... the recipient loses a cheque, or gets stolen from their vehicle, and of course, taken from you mailbox, just to name a few... If you wrote a cheque and it clears, how can you even verify that no details have been changed? As you have stated, you are not online... so how could you know? After all, all you would know is that a cheque that you wrote for a set amount cleared.

You seem to be describing someone changing the recipient of a (stolen?) cheque - I'm shocked to think that wouldn't get a call from the bank to verify, even if initialed. I'm not saying it's impossible, though.

Yes, I was shocked too. That is why I am warning people about this. Banks do NOT perform the level of checking you would expect them to. Time to wake up! Again, they have adopted an after-the-fact process based on complaints brought forward.

(Firefox spellcheck depends on what version you installed... default is US version but there is a Canadian and UK version with respective dictionaries).

One thing you seem to be overlooking... unless you get copies of images of the deposited cheques, which banks are very reluctant or even refuse to do anymore, you have NO WAY to confirm if a cheque was forged...because records will still reconcile.

What do you think about the policy of depositors destroying cheques after mobile deposit? We are always told to do this after X days. But if I keep the cheque, I still have evidence of what it was, which the statement doesn't give me.

Similarly for cheques we write. I keep a photocopy of cheques written. This is because RBC doesn't send back any kind of image and even the line entry is of little help (this is my mom's account). It basically just appears as money that is "gone". How am I to prove I paid with the cheque if I don't keep my own evidence of its existence? Better than nothing.
Being an office supply freak, I still have a stash of carbon paper (red and blue!), if that's any help, but I doubt it as it can't show the cheque format.

I give points to motusbank on this, one of the few things they are good at. They send back images. They are very clear and blow up nicely, unlike the ones from CIBC which are unintelligible to me with vision problems and would also be to almost anyone's naked eye.
I have found so far that the credit unions are better than the banks when it comes to returning cheques - motusbank being owned by Meridian Credit Union and runs on the same systems for the most part.

It is actually part of some mobile deposit agreements that the mobile depositor destroy the original cheque. For example, this is from TD Mobile Deposit Terms and Conditions:

After You Deposit an Item Through TD Mobile Deposit
6. You agree that immediately after you deposit an Item through TD Mobile Deposit, you will write the date and "Deposited" on the front of the Item. You agree that you will keep the Item in a safe and secure place for fourteen (14) days following the date of deposit and will promptly send the Item to us upon TD's request. Upon the expiry of this fourteen (14) day period, you agree that you will promptly destroy the Item.

I haven't seen reluctance from banks to provide copies of cheques that have been drawn on my accounts. There was usually a charge to obtain copies from the branch. I have free access to recent images through online banking.

Some banks offer the images for an extra charge with mailed statements. I checked RBC's Personal Deposit Accounts Disclosures and Agreements. They still offer the record keeping option for "Paper Statement with Cheque Images". The option is $2.50 per month and

³²No charge on Accounts receiving the Seniors Rebate, VIP Operating and VIP Companion accounts, and RBC Signature No Limit Banking accounts.

Thanks for the info, Norman.
I don't understand though WHY it bothers them so much if people hand on to the cheques - especially if they want to charge you to retrieve them otherwise. I mostly use them to move money between FIs, so it's my cheque and I am writing it to myself. I pay to have the cheques printed and I would be paying to have thm processed were it not for seniors deductions. From what you posted earlier, they can reach back in time to disallow a deposit for several months. Why wouldn't you want to keep the evidence? And why would they prevent you?
It makes sense though to write 'deposited" and date o them, to prevent confusion.

My mum, who has the RBC account, doesn't have the ones you named, and they will not permit me as her POA to open any other account of any type whatsoever in her name.

I'll have to ask about that. They are so difficult to deal with that I dread talking to them. And mum's retirement home is now in outbreak, with one resident in hospital and one staff member at home (so far), so there's a lot to try to arrange and work around right now.

For the cheques that are written on her account, I currently photocopy them before submitting them to whomever. As the cheque number is printed, it does give me a better-than-nothing record. But I didn't think to do that until I realized they weren't coming back.

I'm probably wrong, only electronic record-keeping.
When some banks stopped to mail free statements many years ago, from that time everything is only electronic.
I don't even have a printer.

By the way, I would like to buy a printer, that prints directly from memory card or USB flash without connecting to the computer. Apparently, after I did some research, it's hard to find such printer reasonable priced, that prints regular size documents from PDF files from memory cards or USB flash. Any recommendations?

Completely agree, I do the same.
Regarding backup. I have 3 separate memory devices for backup, just in case of failure and additionally copy all files to CD too.