Sir; I think the Alliance & Leicester business bank Giro-bank should be renamed Guru-bank Re-direct. I am a newsagent and on January 13, I placed a first class Giro-bank envelope containing cheques worth £359.58 in the postbox to catch the 5pm post. After frantic phone calls, faxes and letters from Giro-bank telling me I had insufficient funds, the cheques were credited to my account 11 days later. Four charges of £25 were imposed on me over this period of time although later deleted as a gesture of goodwill once the envelope was found. I then decided I would hand in the Giro-bank envelopes over the counter at the post office where my transfer /deposit book would be stamped. On May 1 I did just this ­ and now, on May 20, there is still no sign of the £719.33 deposited cheques in my bank account. I have had to endure letters, calls and faxes, even though I have a stamped transfer/deposit book. Before Giro-bank can locate the 31 cheques and credit my account, they need the chequebook numbers, bank sort codes and account numbers of all the signatories of the cheques. If anyone is thinking about using Giro-bank Direct ­ think again and again and again. Robert Ing Berkeley Stores Chesham Buckinghamshire l A spokesman for Alliance & Leicester, Alliance Business Banking, replies: “It is rare for cheques deposited to be delayed and even more unusual for them to be lost.If a cheque goes missing we need full cheque details to protect the customer and ourselves from potential fraud. When these are received the account will be credited. We advise all customers to note cheque details on a record sheet which we provide. In Mr Ing’s case, his difficulties in January were caused by a postal strike. We regret the loss of cheques in May which we have not received and which appear to have gone missing in transit. We have apologised to Mr Ing for the inconvenience caused and we have credited his account. He has also been reimbursed in full for any charges incurred.” {{LETTERS }}

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