Just before Christmas a friend informed me that she had lost her chequebook whilst out shopping. “Not to worry” she said, “I’ll just get another one from the bank”.

I told her she should phone the bank immediately to get the cheques in that book stopped and order another. “Why? Nobody can use them without a bank card and they are not signed anyway” she replied.

I then told her what happened to me earlier this year.

I went to a local computer shop to buy a new hard drive for my laptop, the original one having died on me.

The shop was fairly busy and there was only one young girl serving. I told her what I wanted and she ran into the back of the shop to fetch my hard drive, came back a few minutes later and handed me a small box in a red carrier bag (that’s a clue to the name of the shop).

“Will you take a cheque?” I asked. “No problem” she replied. I wrote the cheque for £199 ($321) and handed it to her whereupon she gave it a quick glance and put it into the till. “Thank you sir, have a nice day” and turned to serve another customer.

“Just a minute” I said, “You didn’t ask me for any form of identification”.

“Well, you look like a honest person so I thought it wasn’t necessary” was the reply.

I told her that I could have been using a stolen cheque book for all she knew, and she had no right to assume that I was honest. Cheek! Anyway I showed her my driving licence just to emphasise the point.

My friend got the message and promptly phoned the bank. It was probably a 100 to 1 chance it could happen to her, but for the sake of a phone call it’s not worth taking a chance. The next day a taxi driver returned the book to the bank, she had dropped it in his cab and another passenger had found it.