[Johnny555]

Once I was buying a house, and my bank would write a cashier's check for free, but charged $50 for a wire transfer.

So I walked a $300K check from my bank two blocks to my escrow company to save the $50. The check must have been more expensive for everyone to handle (even at the bank, they had to wait for a manager to operate the special "check typewriter" - not everyone was allowed to operate it), but for whatever reason, it was "free".

[tonyarkles]

When we bought our house, we also went the cashier's cheque route for the downpayment, but had a tremendous surprise: the cheque bounced when the lawyers tried to deposit it! I called the bank, and a manager met me at the door. He couldn't figure out what happened, but they re-issued the cheque and it all went through...

[novalis78]

I once tried to speed up a transaction and got a cashiers check. Only to find out that a hold was placed on it because it slightly was more than typical for the account. The hold was for 7 business days which turned out to be 2 weeks (it was a Friday). Of course they couldn’t reverse the hold not giving me back the check. I said ‘don’t you think people will start walking around with cash if you keep doing this’ - they said yes, cash would be faster. Meanwhile spacex is building starship. And Suntrusts wire fees are $60 last time checked and take an hour to complete (in the branch because you pay extra to have that as an online feature). Also, did you ever try to amend a wire transfer because of a misspelled letter? That’s a procedure. What a waste of capital in a digital age.