Off Color Inks And The Business World

[ParkerDuofold]

...I still do all of my banking the old-fashioned way. I write checks by hand and I pay in cash... I also have Lifelock.

 

One of the primary sources of credit card fraud remains shady employees at restaurants. When you dine out, bring cash

 

Yup.

 

 

- Anthony

[sidthecat]

Your Japan story reminded me of when I lived in Dublin in the late Eighties. There was ONE ATM in town - at the American Express office in Grafton Street. You had to have a Gold Card in order to use it, so just about everyone in my company signed up for one.

 

I use duplicate checks, and I’m married to black, but no one’s ever objected to my ancient-looking brown ink on credit slips.

[howdydave]

What the heck...

 

I'll live dangerously and write a check in Pelikan Violet in a couple of days.

[praxim]

One of the primary sources of credit card fraud remains shady employees at restaurants. When you dine out, bring cash

 

Based on events-to-population (as advised to me by a VP at a client) a primary source is the credit card company itself (and so on for the bank, the insurance company etc). That is one reason they are usually willing to fix it quickly. It is also sound to try to avoid companies who wish to keep your details in their files "for your convenience". Use guest checkout where possible.

 

I much prefer cash locally but am a prolific user of credit card(s) on the internet, enter a bank about once a year, and manage financial affairs for a few people and entities while barely leaving my study. One can do things to manage the risks which come with the territory.

 

It would be nicer to write it in ink. I typed about that earlier.

[praxim]

What the heck...

 

I'll live dangerously and write a check in Pelikan Violet in a couple of days.

 

Then plan your next colours.

[Inkling13]

One of the primary sources of credit card fraud remains shady employees at restaurants. When you dine out, bring cash

Why steal a credit card, when you can steal someone's whole identity? It seems that a surreptitious charge is reported easily enough, but a whole line of credit and a shopping spree may be harder to catch, since you wouldn't usually be notified of a charge card you have no idea existed.

[CraigR]

Worked with a lady who wrote all her personal checks in a blood red ink, as if to say "go ahead, suck the blood from my veins!" She was a bubble off of center.

 

I am a retired business man who owned my own companies as well as working in corporate America in the financial field. My preference for business use was black or a blue/black. Just tradition, I suppose. There are issues with reproduction with some colors and mobile banking scans or pics, as well as ATMs, may not pick up the necessary images.

 

For personal use, I am not afraid employ some creativity with the inks I write checks with.

[tvradio]

Got my Jowo B nib in from Anderson Pens and after placing it in my Jinhao x750 I decided to carry it around today to play with, filled with Monteverde Olivine. Ended up writing two checks with it.

 

No one will care. (I doubt you do, either, lol.)

[JayKay3000]

Black / Blue ink. I always thought black was best because scanners were a bit rubbish and black was just easier for them to pickup.

 

Black is a legible color as well. I prefer to write in black. I can read it, everyone else can read it. Personal stuff I switch it up.

 

As for writing a cheque. Not done that in at least 10 years. All my monthly outgoings are set up via online banking or direct debits.

[Moonshae]

I've written and endorsed checks in shades from pink to green to red. The bank doesn't care. Now I do all my banking and bill paying online, with that being automated whenever possible. I never have to worry about a check getting lost in the mail, or a bill getting lost, or just forgetting to send a payment in time. My student loans have a 0.25% rate reduction for using automated payments...that's free money. If I receive a check, I use the bank app to take a picture of it and deposit it that way. None of this has any added cost, so I'm not sure what the comment was about city dwellers not minding fees was...the only fees I get charged are for using ATMs that aren't from my bank, so I avoid that as much as possible. The only time I go to the bank is to use the ATM when I need cash. If my card is compromised, my bank credits me for any fraudulent purchases and sends me a new card. I can go to the branch to get a temporary card until the official one arrives in the mail. In general, it happens about every other year. But the hassle of a new card and redoing the scheduled payments is much less than writing checks every month, etc.

 

The Equifax breach showed that if you have any type of credit at all, whether that's a card, car loan, or mortgage, your financial data isn't totally safe. Using a service like LifeLock and using a bank that has fraudulent charge protection, ensuring you're not responsible for timely reported fraudulent charges, protects your money better than trying to carry cash all the time...cash has no protection.

[Inkling13]

Black / Blue ink. I always thought black was best because scanners were a bit rubbish and black was just easier for them to pickup.

 

Black is a legible color as well. I prefer to write in black. I can read it, everyone else can read it. Personal stuff I switch it up.

 

As for writing a cheque. Not done that in at least 10 years. All my monthly outgoings are set up via online banking or direct debits.

Black just scans better, but you know its original without effort if it is signed in blue. But some colors wont show up on a photocopier, like lite blue, highlighter colors, etc, to avoid copying markups.

[howdydave]

 

Then plan your next colours.

 

Since I'm a newbie, that would be my assorted cartridges from Thornton's: Brown, Orange, Violet, Turquoise and Pink.

[inkstainedruth]

 

Since I'm a newbie, that would be my assorted cartridges from Thornton's: Brown, Orange, Violet, Turquoise and Pink.

 

Well, there might be problems with the Turquoise reproducing well when the check is scanned (I don't have that ink, but turquoises/sky blues/cyan blues in general tend to run into the "non-repro blue" family. Although the last place I worked before getting married had a very high end printer (cost something like 15K and that was back in the mid 1980s) where there WAS a way to get non-repro blues to scan (and my boss was able to program a setting just for that); even then, companies we ran ads for (we published annual books for certain markets of contracting companies and related businesses like fork lift rentals; think "Thomas Registry" but a more restricted market) were more or less required to provide us with artwork that WAS scannable or my boss had veto power over it (there were also rules about 2 color ads and the minimum space between something printed black and something printed red -- which made one company logo look kinda weird as a result -- in case something went wrong when the pages were actually printed...).

I liked that job. I actually got paid pretty well for an art job (and while I did some pasteup and a bit of back-of stat camera work, I mostly was hired to do layouts). And I liked my boss because she didn't put up with (bleep) from the head of HR (who was a jerk) or the sales guy who had been demoted from being a VP (people had to walk his copy upstairs because he was not allowed to cross the threshold of the Art Dept. doorway under penalty of DEATH! ) But I was getting married and moving out of state....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[kiavonne]

I write very few checks these days. Almost everything is done online through my bank for bills.

 

However, when I did write a lot of checks, I always used a "bulletproof" ink, especially after an experiment with ballpoints and rubbing alcohol. As long as I recorded the check in my register, I never cared about duplicates. I also used to jot just under the memo line a reference to my ink color; i.e., LL for Legal Lapis, Lex for Lexington Gray, etc. Was just a quirk of mine.

 

Whenever I sign any legal document, I always use a pen with "bulletproof" ink. I usually stick with a blue, black, or blue/black, but once in a while...

[richardandtracy]

For years & years I only used diluted Pelikan Turquoise, it was the only ink I had. The bank never quibbled for cheques until the first time I STOPPED using it - on the basis it was different from the normal unusual ink, so could be fraud.

 

Regards

 

Richard.

[FrMark]

Back when graphic arts people used copy cameras with film that wasnt blue sensitive I could understand the concern about blues with very low contrast not showing up. Now? With digital cameras? I really doubt thats an issue. I know where to get and or make film thats not blue sensitive but for most people its not a thing

anymore.

 

I made some fluorescent hot pink writing fluid the other day. I couldnt imagine using it for anything except maybe a highlighter. I could not take someone seriously who wrote in hot pink. In my defense I did not know it was going to be fluorescent hot pink before I made the mixture.

 

A royal blue is my goto color, though I have a pen inked in a grass green and another in carnation red in addition to the three with blue.

 

I thought about using a FP for a major transaction recently but didnt want to deal with smeared ink.

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Back when graphic arts people used copy cameras with film that wasnt blue sensitive I could understand the concern about blues with very low contrast not showing up.

Uh, the reason why a light, pure, blue is non-repro is that graphic arts film is only blue sensitive. Thus, blue is indistinguishable from white. Originally, all silver emulsions, going back to the formed-in-place emulsions of the wet collodion process, were only sensitive to blue light. Then came orthochromatic, which was sensitive to everything but red (hence the stereotypical deep-red safelight), and eventually panchromatic, which is sensitive to all colors. (The reason why safelights for panchromatic film are often green is because that's an area of peak sensitivity for the human eye; really, the only truly safe safelights for panchromatic film -- or any color film -- require one to wear infrared goggles in order to actually see anything.)

 

 

M. Tourette's ink.

 

Is that a shade of, ahem, blue?

[ParkerDuofold]

...Use guest checkout where possible.

+ 1.

 

 

Hi all,

 

This thread takes me back to one of the very first questions I asked here:

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/316819-can-a-color-be-too-feminine-or-too-wild/?fromsearch=1

 

 

Back then, I was still the general manager at my company and was concerned how a "bright" color might be perceived. I was still pretty new to fountain pens and their wonderful world of color.

 

Well, that was then... and Waterman Inspired Blue has been replaced by Diamine Chocolate; Diamine Asa Blue; Monteverde Olivine, etc., etc.,... I shifted back and forth between vivid brights and earth tones... until now... since I've been made a VP,... ironically,... only use a blue-black ink... ...since I'm now in a position where I'm directly interacting with a lot of our clients... and have to put forth a much more professional persona... especially in our business.

 

I still get my kicks though... I still wear silk suits and fedoras... to maintain the classic stereotypical image, (they don't dress like that anymore), of the "Italian guy" in the chemical transport, storage and disposal business... in Jersey.

 

Seriously, though, I dress that way because I like the look... not to rattle cages... I also still use a lot of vivid colors at work, but restrict them to inter-office use... because one does have to be careful not to spook the client... ...after all, would you trust a guy who uses J. Herbin Vert Reseda to ship large quantities of hazmat through populated areas?

 

 

Be well all.

 

 

- Anthony

[bluebellrose]

My comment was wry. I recall when we were in Japan in the early 2000s almost everything was cash-based. Things were getting humorously desperate before we could find a machine where I could withdraw some.

 

Here, using cheques has cost more for ages. I am pretty confident almost everything in the bush here would be electronic. Our structure of the banking system is different from that in America I believe -- a few big ones and basically no small private ones, not many branches in less populated areas; electronic is all you've got. Some cafes here are now cash (and cheque) free. Credit or debit card is the sole available form of payment. Credit card slips have not needed signing for quite a while either, being PIN based. I presume that is true elsewhere. It gets pretty hard to need a pen out in the world.

nah not in usa, the last holdout against chip cards. The official reason is that they don't think people are smart enough to transfer to pin and chip directly so it's still pin and signature. Get people used to inserting the card, then move them to putting in a pin.

We do see a lot of Americans come up here with chip and signature. Until recently some of them didn't know how to insert their card either.

[KLscribbler]

Have often used Noodler's Air Corps Blue Black for checks and all general business use. Have never faced a problem or raised any eyebrows.

 

Pretty much the only impact of my ink choice is that colleagues who have known me for a while eventually become capable of spotting documents written by me at a glance, because they recognize my inks. (It's always either Noodler's ACBB, Sailor Sei Boku, or Pilot Blue-Black, depending on which pens are in use that day.)