-=> Quoting Don Dellmann to Dave Halliday <=-
 DD> In some states the postmark on your envelope is the date that
 DD> the debt must be considered paid.  You can get a "certificate
 DD> of mailing" from the Post Office showing that you had the
 DD> payment in the mail by the due date.  Check with your local
 DD> Attorney General or State's Attorney's office for the law in
 DD> your state.
 
        Since the card is issued by the Associates National
Bank of Wilmington, Delaware, it is unlikely state law would
govern this.
        There was an attempt a year or so ago to adopt federal
legislation to this effect.  It failed because of the intolerable
burden it would place on companies that receive thousands upon
thousands of payments a day.
        What state has such a law?  While generally I am in favor
of anything protecting the consumer, this makes such an onerous
demand on the creditor that it appears unreasonable.
 DH> Some things cannot be dealt with - I heard of one case where
 DH> a bank  would take a stack of checks and process the biggest
 DH> ones first.  This was so that if the account ran out of money,
 DH> they would have a number of smaller ones bounce - each with
 DH> their own bounce fee - rather than process all the small ones
 DH> and run out of gas on the big one.
 DD> I had this exact thing happen to me.  After an exchange of
 DD> letters with the Bank's main office and a rather "heated"
 DD> discussion with the manager of our local branch, my only
 DD> recourse was to close my account and seek another bank.
 DD> They actually had the gall to claim that their customers
 DD> PREFERRED in that way.
        Isn't this still governed by the Uniform Commercial Code,
which is in effect in virtually all states?  It used to have a
provision addressing this directly.
        It would seem that your complaint (and the bank's
response) should have been based on what the law says.
        It is my recollection--and that's from a long time ago;
I haven't checked into it recently--that the bank has a duty to
return the smallest number of checks, the basis for this having
nothing to do with the bank's fees but with the damage it does
to the credit and reputation of the depositor.
        Each check bounced damages your reputation with some
creditor, and the theory was that the smallest number of checks
should be bounced because that would damage your reputation with
the smallest number of creditors.
--- Blue Wave/Max v2.20 [NR]
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