# D+H cheque printing fees - WTF?!



## gtone (Nov 1, 2009)

Is it just me or are the fees Davis & Henderson cheque printers are charging getting outrageously high these days? Just ordered 100 cheque renewal pkg yesterday (standard duplicate cheques) and they came to almost $50 plus shipping on top of that. 

Any other Canadian bank approved cheque printer options out there?


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

gtone said:


> Is it just me or are the fees Davis & Henderson cheque printers are charging getting outrageously high these days? Just ordered 100 cheque renewal pkg yesterday (standard duplicate cheques) and they came to almost $50 plus shipping on top of that.
> 
> Any other Canadian bank approved cheque printer options out there?


I'm not 100% sure by Vista Print may do cheques. You can order from them online.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

You raise a very interesting point. 

Do D+H have a total monopoly on printing cheques across Canada?

I did a quick search and found these:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=gett...chrome.0.57j0l2.8068&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I had no idea of the existence of the other suppliers.

Edit: I just found this in one of the forums on the link:

_"I just ordered some cheques from ASAP Cheques, because of this..

*600 cheques for $40 bucks*.. can't go wrong.."_

Cheers

Dave


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## gtone (Nov 1, 2009)

Thanks guys - something to look into!!


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## Beach Bob (Sep 12, 2009)

I've used ASAP for both business and personal cheques and have had absolutely no problems. Much better than being screwed over by your bank!


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

These check printing companies have a license to print money with supplying cheques. It costs them only a couple dollars to print these cheques with new digital set up.


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## bw66 (Dec 17, 2009)

I get Davis & Henderson cheques through our Credit Union, but I'm pretty sure that I don't pay _that_ much. You may want to ask around and then talk to your bank.


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

This comes from my experience as on site and on call tech support for the cheque reader/sorters in US and Canadian banks from 1985 to 1996.
Printed cheques are for the convenience of the banks and the unsubstantiated confidence of the recipient. They are basically IOUs from strangers and legally may be hand written on a cocktail napkin. What makes the difference between pre-printed cheques and hand written cheques is the MICR encoding at the bottom of the cheque that allows the cheques to be automatically read and sorted in the fastest, most efficient manner possible by the banks.
MICR encoding is made up of magnetic ink that can be read by machines based on the quantity of ink in each character rather than the visible shape of the character. It contains the issuing bank's branch, transit and customer acount number, with the cheque amount MICRed in at the recievinng bank. When machines cannot detect MICR encoding or the encoding is damaged or non-existant, it is also read optically ( by OCR and/or human) and compared to the visible MICR printing in a cheque repair machine where an operator will manually or by another machine, attach a new strip along the bottom of the cheque with the corrected MICR encoding (this is for the convenience of other banks that may need to process the cheque in their own machines).
In a nutshell, there is no reason to have a third party print your cheques other than being nice to the banks. If you really wanted to print cheques exactly as the 3rd party printer, all you need is a MICR machine that may be found in flea markets or pawn shops if you look hard enough. They've been around since the 50's and I've seen companies sell old ones or just put them in the trash. You can also print MICR font encoding in ordinary ink or omit it completely but they will have to require seperate handling at the bank. The same is true of utility bills.
If you have any reason to make a silent but satisfying protest with your bill remittance stubs or cheques, just run a magnet over the MICR encoding or put a light scratch on any or all of the MICR characters. That will make the company do more work to process it because they actually have to have a human handle it seperately.
I hope there are no GC members from CSIS on this forum. Yikes. I'd better shut up before I reveal any more banking "secrets"! Catch me if you can...


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## Beach Bob (Sep 12, 2009)

Some banks will actually charge you an extra fee for processing a cheque that is NOT MICR encoded... they don't miss an opportunity to separate a person from his money....


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

Beach Bob said:


> Some banks will actually charge you an extra fee for processing a cheque that is NOT MICR encoded... they don't miss an opportunity to separate a person from his money....


Ah yeah, I should have guessed as much. I don't use cheques at all any more except for rent so I may be a little out of touch with those charges. They gouge for everything and charge you to look at you whether you asked them to or not.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

My business partner ordered cheques the last time from Costco which was the best deal he could find at the time.


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## Jon Gilchrist (Mar 10, 2013)

Davis & Henderson must hold atleast 80% of the cheque market in Canada. They have contracts to print cheques for almost every bank in the country. An interesting fact though is that D&H doesnt actually set the cheque prices the banks do. D+H is just the supplier/manufacturer. If you call D&H and ask for prices for TD Bank theyll give you one price, then ask the same person the prices for a credit union or other bank and that exact same cheque will cost more or less based on where the banks has set their prices. Davis and Henderson does have a very high level of cheque security features. But there are a few other suppliers that offer more security features and better prices at the same time. NEBS is a huge printing company that also offers cheques but they charge more than D&H but offer less security features. Our company has been buying cheques from a company in Calgary called Print and Cheques Now. We get more cheques for free on our orders with better security features. Their site is www.chequesnow.ca 
We had bought from asap in the past but found the quality of their cheques wasnt nearly good enough for our business. So we pay more than what we did at asap but get a better product and pay less than were with D&H.

As a side note we did some research on Canadian cheque suppliers and found the CPA (Canadian Payments Association) They list only 20 print shops in Canada who are part of a cheque printer program that adheres to all the Canadian Bank requirements for cheque clearing. D&H is on the list, as is NEBS and Print and Cheques Now.
Any of these printers cheques are guaranteed to clear without issues. Pretty surprising considering there are thousands of printers in the country.


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## TA462 (Oct 30, 2012)

I can't even remember the last time I even wrote a check. Probably 4 plus years ago at least.


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## lccseh (Mar 16, 2013)

Jon Gilchrist said:


> An interesting fact though is that D&H doesnt actually set the cheque prices the banks do. D+H is just the supplier/manufacturer.


I agree with Jon's comment about the prices not being set by D+H. As a competitor of theirs, they charge a reasonable price to their bank and credit union customers for an excellent quality product. It's the banks and accounting software companies that seem to be marking them up so much. Perhaps to encourage people to switch from much-more-expensive-to-process cheques to electronic payments.



Jon Gilchrist said:


> As a side note we did some research on Canadian cheque suppliers and found the CPA (Canadian Payments Association) They list only 20 print shops in Canada who are part of a cheque printer program that adheres to all the Canadian Bank requirements for cheque clearing. D&H is on the list, as is NEBS and Print and Cheques Now. Any of these printers cheques are guaranteed to clear without issues. Pretty surprising considering there are thousands of printers in the country.


Jon, the list of 20 cheque printers on the CPA site is a bit mis-leading. The printers listed there are self-accredited (all this takes is filling out an application and attesting that you comply in all areas, pay a fee, and you are added to the list) - but no one verifies this. We (ASAP Cheques) more than qualify, but because we sell cheque paper to large companies that print their own, it would be improper to include our CPA printer id on these cheques. Running two versions x 4 colors x 5 layouts has not been a priority.

Also, you state that cheques from the printers on the list are guaranteed to clear without issues. Actually that is not the case. And the self-accredited program states that if problems turn up in processing cheques from someone on the list, they can lose their status.

Regards,

Les
ASAP Cheques (www.asap-cheques.com)


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