This error is not necessarily the bank’s fault.
The image may be unclear even if
- The Payer prepared / handled the cheque badly.
- The Payee mishandled the cheque prior to depositing it to the Drawee Bank
- Some agent of the Payer / Payee / Drawee Bank (e.g. Courier Company) mishandled the cheque somewhere in the chain.
It’s very difficult to find out who was at fault and slap a fine on that party alone.
As you can see, this is a multiparty scenario.
In business processes and systems that traverse multiple parties, it’s not rare for one party to be fined even though they are not at fault.
I just remembered that my tenant’s rent cheque recently bounced because of Not Sufficient Funds in his bank account. The fault was clearly my tenant’s. However, my bank (Drawee Bank) still slapped a fine on me. Sadly, that’s how some multiparty systems work.
But there’s a separate field in law that deals with responsibilities and penalties in multiparty systems, so I’m quite sure there are ways for the aggrieved party to fight the fine in a court of law.