Whenever I visit Family down South I always make sure to get English notes from My Bank here…it saves a red mist coming over My eyes when Scottish ones are refused down there :-p
A UK banknote!? We are all part of the UK are we not? I presume you mean a Bank of England note. I know the difference between tender and currency and about buying and selling transactions. UK banknote indeed! England is not the UK my friend.
ah the great british dilemma! are we british or english or european - the mist clouds the eyes!
When my Scottish friend came down here, she used their notes without any problems too dongles. I thought they were perfectly legal and most shops don’t refuse? 
Aye,You’re right Mups.they are perfectly legal,but some checkout assistants etc’ have never seen a Scottish banknote before and it’s bloody annoying when I have to explain that to Them…and then They ring for the Manager to have it confirmed…:twisted:…I just won’t go through all that malarkey again so take English notes with Me or just use My card.
Legal or not, no shop is obliged to take Scottish banknotes, they can refuse to take them any time they like. Similarly I, as a customer, can refuse to take a Scottish banknote if a shop tries to hand me one. Same is true for UK notes.
Where in My post did I say a shop in England was OBLIGED to take Scottish bank notes?..Scottish/English/Northern Irish bank notes are ALL UK notes…Are You saying a shop in England can refuse to take English banknotes? if so,what would be Their reason for doing so?
I think everyone gets confused about acceptable tender and legal tender
Legal tender is an old term, something that is legal to clear debt
Acceptable tender is whatever is agreed by the two parties
Legally no seller has to accept any type of note or coin, no matter who made them, its as simple as that
If they decided they wanted payment in cheese straws, thats their choice
We are just so used to having two countries, a principality and a Provence with free travel about them, along with the IOM and the Channel Islands all readily accepting the Bank of England notes and coinage, we just cant accept that traders don’t have to accept the notes or coins of any bank they don’t wish to
A stamp is acceptable tender, but no trader has to accept it in payment
Yes, a shop can refuse to accept any kind of banknotes or indeed other payment methods, like for example not accepting credit cards.
If you walk into your local corner shop to buy a Twix bar and hand over a £50 note (you just don’t happen to have anything less on you) then the shop can and most likely will refuse to take it.
They could just as easily refuse to take a £20 note too.
It’s entirely up to the shop and to individual customers.
Obviously a shop that refuses to accept £20 notes might struggle to get frequent business from customers. A risk that is theirs to take. But it’s an entirely possible scenario.
£50 notes are often shunned because there are a lot of fakes out there. If the same becomes true of £20 notes and if banks don’t support businesses by exchanging fakes for real notes, then you can certainly bet that businesses would start refusing £20 notes.
I thought all scots notes were fakes??
Take heart dear Scottish person I have some English banknotes which are equally useless having been replaced by state of the art polymer banknotes.
Never fear, apparently you can go to a bank and change them for the new money. When in Rome and all that…
Actually I vaguely recall that Irish and Scottish banknotes are not legal tender anywhere in the UK they are accepted only by agreement. The only legal tender is Bank of England issued notes - or is it ‘Royal Mint’ issued?.
Coins also have limitations is the amount you can offer as I recall you could only offer pennies up to the value of 2/- over that amount it was legal to refuse them - it might have been 2/1d was the limit. Presumably something similar still applies.
BTW that is a distant memory from school days (perhaps not that long) so it might not be 100% true.
You want to try using Gibraltar notes on the plane to GB
Egyptians take anything.
Like you May I don’t even offer to pay with a Scottish Note. They stay warm and snug in my purse. I just over exercise my Debit Card. As you say “The Red Mist” descends and you end up with a headache. Just not worth the hassle. :shock:
Mind You my card does say Bank of Scotland on it, Maybe the Scunners will start telling me that I can’t use that either.
I know for a fact that most English traders are loathed to take Scottish or Irish banknotes, it’s always been that way. When I helped out at one of my son’s Pawnbrokers, he would never accept them either. It’s nothing to do with picking on our Celtic brethren though, more likely to do with being nervous about fraudulent bank notes.
If you think about it, after doing the usual checks on an English banknote, if we were still a bit iffy about the look of it, we could always compare it to other banknotes taken on the day. But how often do traders have even one Scottish or Irish banknote to compare the customer’s banknote with? I can tell you, usually none! half of us didn’t even know what to check for! hence they wouldn’t take the risk, especially with £10, £20 and £50 notes, Back then, it was even worse because at the time the banks were warning traders that iffy banknotes were in abundance. (I guess old habits die hard, even though it does seem very unfair.) 
Come to think of it, I wonder if the same applies to Scottish and Irish traders with regards to English banknotes? The Irish are so used to Euro’s and the Scottish to their own banknotes. Just a thought. 
Nope no problem with English Banknotes, that’s what hacks us off so much, we take yours. When I was still working I often felt like telling an English Customer we didn’t accept them, just for devilment and to see the look their face.
Aye Mine says RBS and has never been questioned South of the Border…so it’s just the notes which are the problem,and they’re such lovely notes too with the fiver having the Fourth Bridge on it…how very dare They refuse
Our local Chippy will take anything and he is Italian.