Who is responsible for overdraft fees on a bad check?

Yes, you can hold her responsible for any fees that you incurred. You can also charge her a fee for your trouble having to track her down.

If she does not pay you, you can take her to small claims court.

I would charge her the original fee + the NSF + the overdraft charges + a large fee for wasting my time.

You’re definitely stuck paying the fees. I don’t know how the law reads on the topic, but banks routinely credit your account with the deposit “with the assumption that the check will clear”, but the risk is yours in assuming that it will.

Whether you can collect the fees from your customer is a measure of your skill as a business man person, and whether you think future referrals from her may outweigh today’s inconvenience and added expense. (And consider the people you paid by check… should they hold you accountable for the fees that they may incur?)

I tried collecting payment for the check amount plus the NSF fee & overdraft fees but she refused to pay. She agreed to pay the original amount plus the NSF fee but that was it. She claims not to be responsible for any other fees charged onto my acct. Even though they were all caused due to her bad check. Considering if she continues to hide from me & I take her to small claims court, legally would she be responsible?
@CyanoticWasp At this point im just trying to get paid and what bad referrels could she give me. “Dont get your cake from him, I paid him with a bad check and now hes taking me to court? lol

How much are the fees she won’t pay?

@coffeenut its $112.00 in fees plus $400.00 which was the balance on the cake.

Funny thing is she also gave the florist and the hall were they held the reception a bad check. So I have a feeling she knew she didnt have the funds available and thats why she kept stalling and had us waiting 3hrs just to get paid.

For $112 I would take her to court….. BUT if she screwed them too I would talk with them and see if they would join me in the suit, 3 v 1 great odds of winning

I’m not saying that she’ll give you bad referrals if you accept the shit she’s feeding you, @Rv654321. What I’m saying is that if you swallow some of her shit (as people in business swallow others’ shit all the time without excessive protest), then she may someday give you some good referrals to paying customers, whereas if you hound her for every nickel that you can possibly wrest from her she may give you zero referrals, or actually make up stories about how bad your product, service, delivery, etc. ‘really’ was – even if it was very good indeed.

But aside from that, if you can collect the full balance owed and the NSF charges, then you’d be breaking even. Your reliance on her check to cover your own charges (even though things would work that way in a perfect world) was your own fault, and you have to cover your own overdrafts.

I would not expect her to pay for your overdraft charges, but I would expect her to pay bad check fees. You wrote checks when you did not have the money.

@ That’s what were talking about right now. Because I actually booked the cake through the florist.
@CyanoticWasp Yea you do have a point & thats why I had agreed to her just paying the original balance plus the NSF fee. But since she still hasnt paid me I figured if I did end up taking her to court I might as well get as much as I can from her since she tried screwing me over.

Now I agree with you, @Rv654321. There’s room for honest error, but your description of her payment history sounds more like fraud.

Small claims court. You don’t even need an attorney. And given the facts, if you have records, you will probably win.

If she gives you your fee plus the fees for bad check then let the rest go, not worth your time, and you cannot write checks for money you don’t have. Having a check in hand or even deposited is not the same as having the money available. This type of thing is one of the costs of doing business, you cannot always pass everything along to be made whole. She is a terrible client, never work with her again unless you get cash up front. That she is going to come through at all with any money is surprising to me after hearing the story. Had you been paid a deposit or half up front? If not I suggest you start doing that so at least the cost of materials are paid, even if possibly your labor won’t be covered if the client doesn’t come through on the back end.

Yea i guess thats business you always getsome bad apples! The bad thing is I was really relying on this money so now im screwed until she decides to pay me or I figure something else out.
@JLeslie I do require a deposit when the order is placed but it wasn’t enough to even cover materials. My policy is all cakes that will be paid with check or credit card must be paid 4 days prior to the event or paid cash the day of delivery. I made an exception for this event and it came back and bit me in the ass

@Rv654321 Go to the Police department which is in the town/city she lives and talk to the Desk Sgt. Put in a “bad check” document. My wife went through something similar.

Total was original check, fees at bank, $50.00 for bad check ( in our terms and conditions for using check) PLUS cost of day off to collect and mileage charges. Original value was $65 ended up costing the PERP $220.00 cash.

You can get a warrant for fraud.

She owes you and ALL charges—Crying whining will just get your attorney fees increased ( you can in most states add that too.)

@Rv654321 That sucks. I sympathize. @Tropical_Willie gave an interesting answer. Also, maybe work out a payment schedule with her if she is actually talking to you, which it seems she is. If she was going to screw you, I think she would be avoiding your calls and negotiating with you altogether.

I agree with @josie—small claims court. Although together with the florist, it’s probably enough for criminal charges. Knowingly writing bad checks is theft.

I don’t see how you can get her to pay for your overdraft charges. I mean, what if you were sufficiently solvent that you didn’t have overdraft charges? You wouldn’t have had anything to charge her for. She has to pay for your lack of financial planning and not having sufficient cash flow to handle a $400 bounced check? I don’t think so.

I don’t think you’ll get anywhere in small claims court, either. And frankly, I doubt if all this fuss is even worth it. You’re wasting time when you could be out making money. Sometimes it makes more sense to get screwed than to go all out for fairness. The world ain’t fair. Just ain’t.

I think I’d take it as a lesson. My policy about no checks was a good one. I should have taken the cake back (maybe she could have passed a hat to get the cash). I’d also make sure I didn’t spend any money from that check until the check had cleared. And I’d work my hardest to make sure I had some kind of cushion in the kitty, so if unforeseen circumstances happen again (and they will) I’ll have enough in the bank to get me through the problem.

Don’t let yourself be at the mercy of deadbeat customers.

The charges to your own bank account are your responsibility. She broke the law when she presented to you a worthless check. Contact the worthless check unit in your county to see how to proceed—that is different in different jurisdictions.

@Rv654321 Whatever the outcome of this, take this as a learning experience.

You may want to implement some sort of “Terms of Payment” contract that they must sign at time of deposit drop off or at time of order… That clearly defines what happens if default of the payment terms occur,

Eg: On my website if my terms of payment are violated I expect to be compensated for Any expenses/fees/ loss of revenue occurred in trying to recover owing balance…
after clicking checkout you need to accept terms of payment before you can process the payment

So a year ago a customer gave me a bad check,
Balance before: $400.00
Balance after: $457.00 (nsf charge)

Phone call & Email to customer: you currently are in default of payment terms, your new balance is $457.00 payment MUST be made within one month of email sent date or legal action will be taken to recover funds. more than enough time

No response

So I took them to court and won and got paid, in the end they paid $1,494.87 (original fee+NSF+Travel expences+my time+interest)

@JLeslie She doesnt answer calls, texts, & just replied to one email and that was the last I heard. I just noticed the address on the check is close to my house so I think I will stop by today as I think that is her parents house and ask them if they know where or how I can get a hold of her before legal action is taken.
@wundayatta Thats the thing I have seperate accounts so there was money to cover the bounced check but not to cover the transactions that were posted after it. Definately lesson learned but $400 is a good amount of money to just give away dont you think? Specially to non deserving people!
@perspicacious Yea I am not holding her responsible just wondering if she could be..But Im giving her max until the end of this week before I file a claim.
@coffeenut Definately will be tweaking my contract and making sure everyone is aware of my policy.

Thanks for all the good advise!

@Rv654321 I was wondering if you maybe had any contact with her parents. You can’t harrass them, but a knock on the door and a mention of why you are there, maybe they will pay you, and read her the riot act.

@JLeslie That s exactly what I plan to do. I am not gonna force them or harrass to pay me their daughters debt but I hope after explainin the situation they will be embarrassed and just pay me or atleast push their daughter to get on it.

@Rv654321 Whether another person is nondeserving is an interesting point. How much are you willing to pay to fight for justice and fairness when you might not even win? Your time is valuable. You’ve already spent the time making the cake, which presumably the $400 was to pay for. So you’ve lost that time.

Every hour you put into recovering the money is more time lost that you could have been doing something else. Say you get $50 per hour. If you spend eight hours working on it, you’ve essentially blown anything you might get back. If you value your time at $25 per hour, then you get 16 hours to spend on it before it is costing you more than you will get back, if you win.

This is the gambler mentality. They lose something and they “invest” more and more chasing those losses, until they have multiplied the losses two, three, four times or more.

I’m not you and I don’t know your situation, but to me the cost benefit analysis doesn’t work out. I might spend two or three hours working on it, but if it takes more than that, then I’m paying myself for the entertainment of seeking fairness and justice. I’m not recovering any money at that time, because I’ve already spent more recovering it than it’s worth.

Now it’s fine to pursue justice. But I think you should ask yourself how much her undeservingness is worth to you. Do you want to drill her into the ground in your hunt? Then it doesn’t matter whether you get any money back. It’s about punishing her for wronging you. But if the money is the point, then be careful how much time you spend on it.

This is time you could be spending to earn more money. This is what is called an “opportunity cost.” Personally, I think you are much more likely to make money with a new client than you are trying to dun an old one.