And if they didn't mail the check, someone would be up in arms about that!

any reason for the check?

Yeah, what should they do, not give a customer the money owed to them?

@ScottRose: Just ask for 13 cents less on the next bill?

@karmaghost: indeed.

Could be an overage from a closed account. They're a hassle, but they can't just keep your money.

I like to hold on to these kind of tiny checks for a while before cashing them since most don't expire and since it's not worth the gas to go to the bank. They've got to hold the money available until you do. It's really cheap entertainment knowing some accountant (or computer) is tracking the $0.13 check they sent you until you cash it.

@karmaghost:

Damn Right.

I think this is awesome. Good for you David! If only they had sent the check in a 13x13x13 box this would have been golden.

This is not news. They could NEVER simply keep your money. You would call and be furious ... maybe even take them to small claims court.

The postage (a tax deductible item, and reduced from the 42cents if they are presorting) is a pittance in comparison.

My pop was receiving overdue letters from one of his hospital stays .... after the insurance and co-insurance paid off their goofy % of the amounts there was the classic $0.01 underpayment created by rounding errors with the goofy %'s. So he called the hospital and was told to forget about the bill as the clerk would just pay the penny herself and closeout the account.

How nice.

Sometime later he had to visit the same hospital and went by the billing department (yea... to pay that penny) and the billing department had created a PENNY Bucket for customer's to donate their pennies to cover small billing errors.

Sometimes common sense does prevail.

I worked at a Verizon repair call center for a summer (worst job EVER, but that's another story) and for the following four pay periods after I quit, they would send me a check for $0.00. Even the written part of the check in the pay to the order of field would say "zero dollars and 0/100 cents." The first time I received one of these checks I was excited thinking I forgot a pay period or something, but then it just got tiring.

@Binaryslyder: If said box was full of packing peanuts it would be super golden.

Yeah. They are pretty wasteful. The like to send me a statement every quarter. I haven't had an account with them in years and the statement is always a $0 balance.

@karmaghost: Agreed.

Also, has it been confirmed that they indeed spent a 42 cent stamp on the envelope? Those presorted/bulk mails usually are heavily discounted.

@seldon452:

Comcast will not mail you a check unless you're canceling or made a request to cash out your existing balance. I assume the person who received this check had canceled their services and since they had paid for the money already, after fee deductions/prorated service, there was still $0.13 left in his account which they needed to return in a way or another.

@emt888: Did you ever try to "deposit" those checks? If so, wouldn't that cost them? I always deposit those ridiculous pennies checks (especially class-action settlements), because I figure it costs them for processing AND I know they're counting on lots and lots of people not cashing them, which lets them keep a lot of the settlement money (unless I'm wrong and the unclaimed settlement money goes to benefit orphaned monkey babies).

I made a comment here about unclaimed class action settlement monies. What if some enterprising nonprofit set up a program whereby companies could offer their customers the choice of donating their tiny refunds to a charity? You'd get an e-mail (not a snail mail, obvs) or the final bill saying we'll either send you a check for 12¢ or we'll donate the 12¢ to the Fund for Orphaned Baby Monkeys.

Discuss.

Several years ago I was having problems calling a specific number. The phone call connected but didn't ring.
Sprint told me it seemed OK from their end but to make sure, dial 10288, the AT&T dial around number.
The phone rang, but wasn't answered. A month later I got a 31¢ charge on my bill from AT&T. I called to complain & they told me their 800 number doesn't handle those complaints & I had to write or fax them [toll free fax].
I faxed them & a month later received a letter telling me I still owed the 31¢.
That letter had 33¢ postage on it.
When I stopped laughing I faxed back again disputing the charge, knowing that whatever the result, they'd waste more money on postage.
Sure enough, a month later is the same letter, now with 35¢ in postage as the rates went up. So I did it again, & the same result, 35¢ postage.

AT&T wasted $1.03 in postage to defend a 31¢ charge.
A real group of dimbulbs there.
I remember when they used to mail you a dime for wrong numbers at pay phones & you actually got the dime, it was never stolen in the mail.

Common sense should have told someone not to dispute such a single small charge.
Someone in a large business told me the true cost of all that was done was at least $5 a letter, which makes me even happier.

I closed out an account at US Bank a few months back and they mailed me a check for a whole penny I earned in interest. I threw the check away. Even though there's an ATM in the building I work in, it wasn't even worth my time or energy to go downstairs and deposit it

No. Really it's "Comcast saves hundreds of thousands of dollars by automated printing and bulk mailing overage checks."

I dropped AT&T as my long distance carrier over a year ago. Since then, every month, they send me a statement showing a $0.42 credit. I'm sure their postage cost is less than $0.42 but after a year, it's got to be more than they claim they owe me. I'm just going to leave it alone and see how long it takes for them to figure it out.

What was more fun was the State of New York income tax people who sent me all kinds of dunning letters and made all kinds of threats if I didn't pay my overdue tax. The tax was $0.00. I finally called the person named on one of the letters and asked if she was serious. Never received another bill.

@krunk4ever: I have a $0.01 balance in my sharebulder account, I wonder how long I should wait to cash it out. The way the economy is going in a few years it could be worth $3 cents.

A family member who is a doctor once received a check from Illinois Medicaid for $0.00 as payment for services rendered to a patient. Said family member deeply regrets not saving the check for posterity (sadly, it was thrown away).

@Barrister76: You should have just sent them a check for $0.00!

Although I suppose that would have cost you for the stamp...

@Xerloq:

My late accountant once told me that years ago, the IRS sent him a check for something like ten cents. He tossed it in a drawer and forgot about it. Then, several months later, he received a letter saying, "Would you please cash that check we sent you? We're trying to balance our books."

Exact same thing happened to me. I accidentally overpaid my wife's Victoria's Secret card by 40 cents one month...which they sent to me in a check. Yep. :-)

I've gotten one of these before. Satisfying and amusing.

I work for HSBC and this kind of stuff happens all the time. Especially doctor's offices, $0.01 checks aren't that uncommon (I probably see a couple per month). But yeah, companies don't keep any money that they owe.

or they could be like charter communications - they've been sending me a statement every month for the past 13 months informing me of my 30 cent credit. when i try to get them to stop and just keep my money, they say they can't. the system is automated. wonderful.

I've still got my last paycheck from when I worked for Bank One- it is for exactly $0.00. I considered trying to cash it.

@ryaninc: You pay your wife's Victoria Secret bills? Are there more of you?

Well, I'm not going to name names, but I've ordered services from companies where literally a quarter of the cost of the product is in postage. (it's not netflix, but they build their business around USPS prices - most companies automatically generate mail and it gets aggregated as a whole).

For a moment I thought the tag said Bombastic!.

@karmaghost: Are you kidding? Comcast probably sent the check because the customer demanded it!

IBM sends me dividend checks once a quarter. They average about 7 cents.

I tried to sell of my stock holdings but apparently between when I issued the sell order and when they actually sold, a dividend was paid and reinvested in more stock, so now I own slightly less than half a share of IBM, which keeps generating these cheques. I don't know why my pennies aren't being reinvested as was the original case, but they aren't.

@cwsterling: I remember hearing about this. basically someone sent them a business reply mail with 13 pennies in the envelope (so they have to pay for the weight), said it was a mistake, then demanded their 13 cents returned.

This was a number of years ago (if I recall correctly) so this is probably in tribute.

if they hadn't sent it, there would be a Consumerist expose' about how Comcast is robbing its customers thirteen cents at a time.

@Binaryslyder: that's only from Dell.

I received a check from AT&T a few years back for $0.01. I framed it :)

@GirlCat: I love this idea, for real!

I am a municipal treasurer & I write refund checks for whatever amount real estate taxes are overpaid and mail them. It is better public relations to send a check for any amount (and have the taxpayer not cash it) than to try to decide that magical number of when it is too small to refund. There are many municipalities in our area that have decided what that magical number is - some use $5 and some $10. I've even thrown in 8 cents for someone who underpaid by that amount (out of my own pocket) rather than have the tax go into deliquency. It pays to live in a small town where you know your neighbors!

@karmaghost: Chances are it's done by an automated system that goes through accounts that require refunds and prints the checks automatically.

However you'd like to look at this, it's a damned if they do and damned if they don't. Comcast has bigger problems than $0.13 checks, mostly crappy overpriced packages and awful service.

@jdmba: this may not be news, but your post isn't original either. match made in heaven.

Ann Taylor corporation mailed me a $0.01 cent check yesterday. Wish I had remembered to take a picture of it. It really is the height of ridiculousness.

my landlord did this a few years back in college. I got a check for $0.25 as a refund for my $400.00 security deposit. Before this happened I had already decided to live there again so when it came time to pay the deposit again, I signed the $0.25 check back over to them and wrote out the rest of the $399.75 in another check. SLAP!

I've been receiving a monthly bill from comcast for over a year now for $0.23. I called and asked them if they could just credit it for me and forget about it. They said the couldn't because it wasn't their charge, but a "tax" of some sort. It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen, if they would have just paid it, they would have saved them selves 14 (so far) mailers to me.

@Treasurer:

I worked for the local garbage company.

1. If the customer stopped service we'd only bill if they owed $5 or more.

2. If they were due a refund: It had to be $10 or more. If they complained they'd cut a check for the smaller amount.

I hated that job.

I remember one time my dad got a Sprint bill for $.03 for taxes or some kind of nonsense. He decided to take three pennies, tape them to the bill and mail it in. I'm pretty sure they accepted it too.

Bills for a less than postage are much more annoying. Nobody wins.