Would you mind looking again

A teachable moment for the bank

Mrs. B occasionally runs across something on e-Bay that she wants to buy. Now nobody in their right mind actually gives out a credit card number on the Internet (do they?), so PayPal is her preferred choice for payment.

Every once in a while, a buyer doesn’t have a PayPal account and needs a good old money order. So, Mrs. B buys a money order from the Canadian Post Office and sends it off to the seller in America … and back comes an apologetic e-mail from the seller:

Hello Liz,
Our bank just returned the money order you sent to pay for the [edited out]. We didn’t notice is was a Canadian money order, but of course, our bank did and will charge us US$10 to collect the CAD$6.95.

So, Mrs. B checks her records, cranks up the scanner and sends a polite response (with image attached) suggesting that just possibly, ever so slightly, perhaps the bank was in error when they said the Money Order was in Canadian funds. You be the judge!

Looks clear to me!

Looks clear to me!

So, no surprise that the seller didn’t notice it was a Canadian money order. But you have to wonder about her bank.

Yes, the money order does actually have the word Canada on it twice, and some of the words are in some foreign language, but I wonder which bit of the Money Order the bank looked at??

Final score
Going way out on a limb here, but my guess is that that bank will probably agree that the money order really is in US funds and the whatever-it-is-that-Mrs-B-bought will soon be adorning our home.

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