they were obsolete 5 years ago steve
my cheque book must be 10 years old and the only 10 i have used is for the revenue,but they take BACS now
I try not to take cheques anymore,bank transfer eliminates losing time parking queueing etc in banks.
they were handy in their time but too open to fraud
LLL
I use cheques now and then, as i hate having to phone up and give card details over the phone to someone who doesnt understand me. Mind you, I dont know many folks my age that use them.
The big one was donations, charities especially, stated that over half of their donations arrived via the cheque, despite pay by 'phone, text,email,paypal -athons' they still are the preferred way of giving.
Cheques are great to pay accounts with, but crap to recieve. My crappy bank, Bank of Scotland, have no local branches, so I pay into Halifax BS, they take 1 day admin to send it to BoS and then they take a further 4 days, add a weekend in and that can be 7 days to get payment, and their both virtually the same company.
I've looked into getting a card payment machine, instant money, almost like cash, but not cheap, maybe the way to go though.