Getting a cheque book?

Random

What's the story with getting a cheque book? Is it like getting a credit card?

I'm only young and proberly wouldn't use it much ... but it would be handy maybe for things like paying college fees etc?

is_that_so

You may find that a Laser card will do the trick and use drafts for anything else. It costs too much and unless you are looking to go into business or planning to write lots of cheques it really is something you can do without. Check out the various banks' websites to see the cost.

Ruu_Old

Get a laser card because if you pay a cheque and no funds to cover that, you'll have a nice fat fee to pay for it.

Random

Nothing jumps out about cheques on my banks (AIB) website ... I guess they're considered out dated.

I didn't realise there was major costs involved in actually using cheques.

is_that_so

Many businesses use cheques as do public organisations but it is becoming far less common for personal users. Here's the AIB spiel

*Other charges still apply.
Terms and conditions apply. Credit facilities are subject to repayment capacity and financial status and are not available to persons under 18 years of age. A Facility Fee of €25.39 applies to Overdrafts. Debit Cards are liable to annual Government Stamp Duty. Currently EUR 10 per card applies where the card is used for either an ATM/in branch transaction or a Point of Sale transaction, and EUR 20 per card applies where the card is used for both. Government Stamp Duty of EUR 0.15 applies to each cheque.
AIB Bank is a tied agent of Ark Life Assurance Company Ltd. for life and pensions business. Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. is regulated by the Financial Regulator.

loyatemu

cheques are still occasionally useful for paying tradesmen (those that don't insist on cash of course) or paying for things by post.

True, more and more places now accept laser and credit card over the phone, but I still use cheques now and then.

vector

Actually this is an interesting question, I considered it a few months ago.

You say you are young, so am I, I found out that the AIB Student Plus account does not have a chequebook, even if you ask for one. This is despite it having the appearance of a "Current Account" within the traditional meaning. An IFSRA survey implies that it does allows a cheque book (by saying that the cost of a guarentee card is Nil, and not N/A). I emailed IFSRA telling them their "Student Current Survey" survey is wrong, naturally because they are a large organisation I got no reply, but more importantly they never changed the survey.
http://www.ifsra.ie/data/cr_costsur_files/Student%20current%20account%20cost%20survey%20-%20issue%202.pdf

It demonstrates, perhaps, how little the chequebook is valued these days, if this was 10 years ago (10 years being a time before the laser card) and I had contacted IFSRA (if they existed) they would have found it very interesting that a current account didn't allow a chequebook, yet today no one cares about cheques, because the laser card has replaced most of their functionality.