Hi, I have a small business and I have several accounts with Wells Fargo. I pay all of my bills with the Online Bill Pay service...where you enter payee info, and send checks online.

Here's the thing...you pick a date that you send, and it results in a "receive by" date like 6 or 7 days later...time it takes to process and mail the check, I presume. However, WF removes the money from my ledger (aka available balance) on the date it is sent....NOT the date it rec'd....and not the date it is cashed.

How can they do this? Shouldn't that money stay in my bank account until it is cashed by the payee? Where does that money go for those 6 or 7 days?....Its not in my account, and its not in my Payee's account! What if the check gets lost in the mail?...or the Payee sits on the check for a month? That can be a lot of potential interest being stacked up from all their customers....and for me, it is significant to my cash flow as its 25% of my usual payment terms.

This does not seem right to me. If for no other reason, then seeing a check that I thought should be deducted...and it doesnt get deducted by some time...indicates to me that something went wrong (the check got lost, etc) and I can contact the Payee about it and resolve it. The way it is now, I have no idea if/when my Payee has the check, or when its in WF's grubby hands.

Am I missing something here?...this has bothered me for a long time, and seems like a really sleazy practice.

Anyone else having issues with Bill Pay and Wells Fargo? This is the second month in a row that my payment has not arrived on time. I received a notice about a week ago that they were sending a paper check. This is super inconvenient, now I have to pay the bill twice because I can’t rely on Fidelity to get it there on time and avoid late fees.