Stop Payment. Now Stop It Again.

On Sunday July 25, 2010, 12:10 am EDT

IN this episode, we return to the world of finance and look at a bank fee that’s kind of like a chronic disease.

Q. I wrote my landlord a check for rent this May. Days passed, and then a week and then two, and I saw that he had not cashed it. I called him and he told me in a disgruntled tone that he had not received the check and that I needed to mail another to him immediately, which I did.

I didn’t like the idea of putting two checks for the same month in the mail — if both were cashed, I’d risk bouncing other checks. So before I sent a second check, I called Bank of America to cancel the first.

“O.K. sir,” said a Bank of America rep, “that’s going to be $30 to put a stop payment on that check.”

Fine, I said. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that canceling the check was going to be free.

“O.K., it is done; the stop-payment order you have just authorized is valid for six months,” she said. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

Six months?

“Yes, sir, a stop payment on a check is only valid for six months.”

I asked if there was any way I could cancel the check permanently.

“Yes sir, you can renew your stop payment six months from now. For an additional $30.”

At this point, I was getting agitated.

“Well, technically, you can renew stop payments indefinitely” she said, as if this were the glimmer of hope I was searching for. “However, you will still have to pay $30 each time.”

So, Bank of America will graciously allow me to pay it $30, every six months, till death do us part, to cancel a single check.

I argued with the company’s check department and several customer service reps, and they all repeated the same policy. Is this even legal? What can I do? Lawrence Lac

Brooklyn

A. “Yes” to Question 1. “Cough it up, if you’re really worried about the check,” to Question 2.

For elucidation, the Haggler called a Bank of America spokesman, Donald Vecchiarello, who said that, generally, a check older than six months is considered “stale,” and is not cashed. The key word here is “generally.” Left wide open is the possibility that Bank of America would take a good whiff of, say, an eight-month-old check, consider it fresher than morning dew, then cash it.

Mr. Vecchiarello stated that despite the conversations Mr. Lac had with three Bank of America employees, reps of the bank are not encouraged to extract $30 stop-payment fees from customers. Instead, he stated, they tend to emphasize the “Don’t worry, it’ll go stale,” side of this policy.

Asked for written proof, Mr. Vecchiarello forwarded several paragraphs of the bank’s “Deposit Agreement and Disclosures,” a lengthy document that would make terrific beach reading in Opposite Land. Among the relevant sentences are these: “A stop payment order generally expires after six months. However, we may, in our sole discretion, elect to honor a stop payment order for a longer period of time without notice to you. If you want the order to continue after six months, you must ask us to renew the order. Each renewal is treated as a new order.”

To the Haggler’s ears, this translates to “Hey, if you’d like to be sure that we don’t confuse the moldering old check for an aromatic young one, you might want to spend $30 every six months, until you, or the party you don’t want to pay, expire. That said, we might refuse to pay an old check, so you never know. Roll the dice. It’s exciting!”

In a follow-up e-mail message, Mr. Vecchiarello noted that Bank of America was merely following the Uniform Commercial Code, a comprehensive set of rules that cover most aspects of commercial law. It states, “A stop-payment order may be renewed for additional six-month periods.”

He added that the Bank of America’s goal was not to get rich $30 at a time. “We want to make sure our customers understand that a stop payment only lasts for six months, and from time to time a stale check may get cashed,” he wrote. “We do not do this to encourage customers to renew stop payments. Instead, we want to make sure our customers are fully educated on how our processes work, and what the potential ramifications are.”

Fair enough. But there is apparently nothing in the Uniform Commercial Code that says that the bank has to extract $30 for a stop-payment order, and then suggest that it might be smart to chip in another $30 six months later. In fact, some of Bank of America’s rivals have what might be called a once-is-enough policy in this area, calls to phone reps revealed. Chase charges $32 to stop payment on a check, but that sum will stop the sucker for good. You get the same deal at Citibank for $30. At Charles Schwab, a stop-payment order is free, and permanent.

Despite assurances that continuing stop-payment orders are rarely needed, Bank of America seems unwilling to ditch the potentially lucrative ambiguity built into its policy. Last week, a rep from its Executive Customer Response team called Mr. Lac and apologized for the miscommunication of his service reps, by which he seemed to mean the implication that Mr. Lac definitely had to hand over $30 every six months to stop payment on that rent check.

But Executive Customer Man also said — and you know it’s coming — that in some cases, stale checks are cashed and, further, that if Mr. Lac wanted to be extra, supercertain about his check, he should probably call in six months and renew the order.

‘To the guy’s credit,” wrote Mr. Lac, who is 26 and works at an ad agency, “he also said if I wanted to call and continue the stop payment for an additional six months the $30 fee would be waived.”

The Haggler would like to end with a withering kicker about the $45 billion in bailout money that taxpayers handed over to Bank of America.

But he won’t.