Recourse on foreign cheques

Friend of my wife just narrowly avoided a scam recently, selling something expensive via a FB group (which is mostly people who know each other and meet occasionally, not a random marketplace). Buyer was overseas, sent a cheque which cleared....but they'd overpaid and wanted some money refunding - obvs a huge red flag here but seller didn't realise yet..luckily the bank smelt a rat and stopped their repayment. Once we'd heard this detail we..."encouraged" the seller to stop the process.

I'd heard about the possibility of "cleared" cheques actually being later revoked....and a bit of googling finds NatWest saying this can happen for up to *7 years*!!!!

https://www.natwest.com/support-centre/general-banking-information/general/what-is-foreign-cheque-collection-and-negotiation.html

Which seems to make foreign cheques utterly useless for any sort of transaction where you don't have complete trust in the buyer.