Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Where's My Money?

I got a wake-up jolt this morning when I went on line to check my accounts at Fidelity. I had sent them a check for $12,000 back at the first of the month and it didn't seem to have been posted. I flipped over to a separate screen to look up my hometown bank records and sure enough, the check had cleared my bank on February 12.

Back to Fidelity where I set up an IM session with a techie. He asked some perfectly reasonable basic questions. Bank routing number? Who endorsed it (actually, the endorsement stamp is so smudgy I could barely make it out). After a few minutes he was back on line saying right, we have it, we'll post it right away (Dated back to the 12th, yes? Yes, dated back).

So it ended happily, if you price my time at zero. But I wondered--where does an outfit like Fidelity come off misplacing a $12,000 check even if only once in a while? Could it be--oh dear--that I sent paper, instead of bits and bytes?

Oh and he did say: better check back in a couple of days to confirm that it is in the account. Fine, good point, but not the kind of advice that inspires confidence in Fidelity.

Update: Looks like I have a history here:

Arrgh...

Truer than They Know
?

1 comment:

elrojo said...

fidelity "lost" $12,000 you sent? that is scary. i wish a finance writer for major paper would pick that up. fidelity will claim it would have found it anyway, but who knows? computers set up to "lose" a depositit every once in a while? somebody knows.