so its like this: my husband pays our personal bills from work and so he has multi zahlungs auftrag there with all the bill paying information. Anyhow someone at work used it by mistake to pay the work bills. I'm not really bothered by the money aspect since we can sort that all out easily, i'm more bothered that the bank accepted someone elses signature on our transactions. It was obviously someone elses name there. So my question isn't really a question because we sorted everything out, but i feel like i should be doing something else and not just shut up about this. Thoughts?

I believe that there is no (or little) checking of signatures, unless the cashier is suspicious, or a complaint is raised.

Years ago, in another land, my wife would occasionally sign a cheque for me, for my business account. I once got a call from the bank asking me to confirm that I had indeed written one cheque, as the signature was a bit flaky. Turned out it was me... the ones my wife did never got questioned.

thats hilarious. Yes, i also have signed for my husband in the past.

I wonder though if there are no checking of signatures then what are they there for? Its a guarantee of sorts. Also i could understand if the signature was forged, but this was a completely different name. Isn't there some responsibility the bank needs to take?

As your husband does these at work, were the payments made electronically?

The bank that accepts the deposit would not know how to cross-match the signature. It's only once the deposit slip/record goes to the issuing bank that they would have any reason to cross-match the signature, and mostly these papers just get filed somewhere along with a million others...

It would be pretty complicated for someone to commit fraud - if they use someone else's money to pay their own bills, that's going to be pretty obvious...

I havn't had a problem but compared to what I am used too, signature checking here is almost non existant, I use my wife's account a lot, I can simply go to the bank with a card (hers or mine) and a drivers licence (even an Australian one) and take what I want. I am authorised to use her account but it does seem a bit slack at times here.