Checks

Long before banks started locating branches inside supermarkets, grocery stores acted as informal financial establishments, cashing payroll checks and personal checks to provide ready cash for their customers. That's starting to change. Whole Foods Market Inc. is considering banning the use of personal checks at its stores and this month stopped accepting checks at two stores in Los Angeles County and one in Arizona as a test. Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, the California division of British retailing giant Tesco, won't take personal checks at any of the 70 stores it operates in California.

Washington Mutual Inc., which has made free checking a cornerstone of its marketing campaign, is about to start imposing a $5 fee on noncustomers who come into a branch and cash a check drawn on a WaMu personal account. In other words, let's say you're a WaMu customer and you write a $30 check to your buddy Bob for his collection of vintage Peter Frampton records. If Bob, who doesn't have a checking account, cashes the check at his local WaMu branch, he'll only get $25. WaMu would keep $5.

Nearly 100,000 taxpayers are missing out on income tax refunds because the checks sent by the Internal Revenue Service were returned as undeliverable. The IRS said Thursday that the average refund for the 95,746 taxpayers whose checks were returned was $963. The checks, worth a total of $92.2 million, can be claimed as soon as the owners update their addresses with the agency. In Los Angeles County, there are 4,148 checks worth nearly $4.

Angels starter Joe Saunders was scheduled to be examined today as he began a stint on the 15-day disabled list for tightness in his left shoulder. Saunders said he has struggled with the problem all season and had hoped he could work through it. He had started the season 5-1 but has gone 4-6 since then. And after lasting only 1 2/3 innings Friday night against the Texas Rangers, in which he gave up five uns, the Angels decided to place him on the disabled list. The move should "let him get this little tightness out and then get back on the mound throwing and get back in the rotation, hopefully in a couple of weeks," Manager Mike Scioscia said.

United Airlines said it was retesting instruments on seven Boeing Co. 747 jets after learning that equipment used for inspections was overdue to be calibrated. United "found no issues" so far in the testing and disclosed the checks to the Federal Aviation Administration, the Chicago-based carrier said. The agency didn't order the retests, and the problem was found by the airline in a routine maintenance check, an FAA spokeswoman said. No flights were canceled, a United spokeswoman said.

Accompanying the April 6 article "Fraud Traps Await Unwary Associations" was a sidebar titled "Built-In Safety Checkpoints." The first item in the list is "Require two signatures on checks . . . greater than $500." Most banks will not honor a request to require two signatures on a check for it to clear, especially for amounts as small as $500. They claim that automated processing of checks makes it impossible to monitor the number of signatures. Some years back, I tried to get the California Legislature interested in mandating banks to honor such requests from nonprofit organizations, which would include homeowner associations.

A police officer investigating an apparent break-in at a store in Kalamazoo, Mich., instead nabbed a dead 10-pound turkey. Paula Hensell was conducting checks on businesses when she noticed a shattered front window. Hensell entered assuming a burglar was still inside, but instead found a wild turkey on a table. It apparently flew through the window.

Bart DeLorenzo: Last Sunday's Personal File column with director and producer Bart DeLorenzo said that for a guilty pleasure, he checks out d-list.com every morning. The correct website is dlisted.com.

Even though employees at the Peer Bearing Co. no longer work for the Spungen family that recently sold the Waukegan, Ill-based ball bearings maker, they still received a turkey each this Thanksgiving in keeping with tradition. But even better was the gift that came in mid-September, when the Spungens threw a party to celebrate the company's acquisition by a Swedish company. They gave away $6.6 million in year-end bonuses to Peer's 230 employees, decided by a formula based on each worker's years of service.