Policy for Money Orders

I just bought an item here on Astromart and sent a US Postal Money Order as payment. The person receiving payment said he would have to take my MO to the bank and wait for the "funds" to clear before he would ship. This is the first time I have ever heard of this. I always treat money orders as cash. I ship my item as soon as I receive a MO and have always expected the same treatment. Am I wrong here? Can a MO bounce somehow? Every time I took one to the bank they gave me cash with no hold that I was aware of. What do you all think? Thanks.

John Miele

There have been numerous incidents of fake
money orders and cashiers checks, though usually
these are drawn on foreign banks where it takes
many weeks to process before the fraud is
discovered.

Even if your bank gives you cash on the spot
for the money order, there is still somewhere in
the fine print that they have the right to recover
funds from you if it later turns out to be a
bad money order. For example, you probably have
an account at the bank, and somewhere in the terms
of the account is all sorts of stuff protecting
their rights to recover funds. Basically it is
your problem if the MO is bad, even if the bank
accepts it and gives you cash.

There were a bunch of postal money orders stolen and they still show up now and then. I sold a mount recently to a fellow in Canada and he paid with a money order, not a postal one. My bank requested that I let them hold he money for 11 days to be sure it was good. They said they saw bad money orders all the time and they would not be responsible for any loss.

Those are the kind of details I like to see a seller state in his ad, however one should never assume anything in a transaction. As the buyer you have the ultimate responsibility in asking these sorts of questions of the seller such as how soon will you ship after receiving payment. I agree if one is to make an assumption about such things, I myself consider USPS money orders to be good as cash, but I would imagine one could be forged using modern computers and scanners. Plus there is the fact that some Astromarters are just harder to deal with that others. He could be using this as an excuse to ship the item when he gets around to it. I would try to pin him down on whether the bank put a hold on the funds and when he expects it to clear.

DanL