How Often Does a Check Really Get Lost in the Mail?

I haven't used a stamp in years unless to send a personal card/christmas cards. Online bill pay is free and easy. I pay everything online. If you come across issues online, everyone takes phone payments.

Well, they probably lost the payment. However, mail does get lost frequently. Especially, now that post offices are shutting down, and they are cutting jobs. I worked in a UPS store a few years ago, for extra money. We did accept mail. Several people came in and complained about their mail getting lost on a daily basis.

We do paperless bills, for that reason.

why don't you do online banking. i do it through chase. it's free and you have a history of all your payments and you know for sure they get it.

I recently received a check in a mail that was a few weeks late and torn into two peices. The post master forwarded it to me with an apology that it had been damaged during the postal process.
To answer your question, yes checks really do get lost/damaged in the mail. It doesn't happen often but it is a risk we take when we do/can not hand deliver ourselves.

have you thought about using electronic bill-pay thru your bank? that way you have a reference number if something goes wrong.

In 20 years, three times. The first one returned an empty envelope and the check itself never appeared. Once, it showed up at the bank behind a filing cabinet when they painted three years later. I made them refund the late fees and send me a letter.

The third check was mailed with 6 others last year and still has not shown up. The local company waved the late fee if I brought a check to them, but swears it never showed up.

Several times the post office has sent me mail inside a plastic envelope explaining the letter got opened by the machine. Thick, uneven cards have arrived with needle holes stabbed through.

it has happened to me a few times

We just got in our returned mail a letter we sent out in January. By we I mean my office. The letter was all nasty and moldy. That was the post office, I don't even want to think where they found it. :(

I think 9X out of ten that they got it but it they're the ones who lost it.

This is why I use my banks auto-check mailer. That way I have a record of the bank mailing my check if a dispute comes up. I am a member of USAA and it free through them.

Why dont you just pay your bill through your phone? Its easy to do, saves a stamp and you wont have to worry about it getting lost. Just a suggestion.
I had my rent check get lost in the mail. My landlord called & said he never got it. I know it was mailed early. Since we are never late or skip he understood and let us send it the next month so we didnt have to send two checks one week apart. And the post office wonders why ppl pay bills online. LOL

Well I've never had a check get lost in the mail that I personally sent but ... one Christmas we (my husband and myself) went in on a large gift for my in-laws with my husband's brothers and their wives. Since my husband and I live the closest to my in-laws we volunteered to pick up the gift ($100 per couple = $300 total) and have the others just mail us their checks. Well that was 5+ years ago and would you believe those checks (yes, both of their checks) are somewhere out there still lost in the mail. We'd attempted numerous times to get another check from both of them with no luck because it was mailed to us ... whatever ... luckily it was before I was a SAHM so the 'extra' expense didn't hurt us too badly. Also, from that point forward we insist on receiving their checks prior to purchasing joint gifts!

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We do bill pay online, but I am not sure how all of you who mentioned online banking...how yours works, but we have Wells Fargo, and they actually send a check to most of your places. I am surprised at how many people are not aware of this. So stuff can still get lost in the mail, but its Wells Fargo mailing the check out to my utilities, cell phone, charge card, etc.

But we never have had issues in all the years we do the bill pay online. I only go thru stamps at the holidays. I still am using last years pinecone ones! LOL

actually is a fairly common occurance. Sometimes the window to the address on the envelope is damaged. So the automatic reader cant read, so it gets thrown in a pile for humans to sort through, if they still cant figure it out then it gets thrown in lost mail and that just sits for years till someone with time and patiences actually goes through it. I had it happened when a check didnt reach a company and they did the whole late charge as well and all that. Got it cleared and then saw on my account the "lost" check was cashed 3 months later by that company (small, local company) and I got a credit that month. When I asked what was going on, they had received the late check and that they kept the envelope cause it was strange, there was handwritten sharpie pen on it that said this is not MAINE this mail is for MINNESOTA... so it went to Maine and what the weird thing is, is this company has no sisters, no chain, no nothing it was for a local Furnace, and heating company with no name of another company even near what theirs was. So what was my check doing in MAINE for 2 months? Never know.

Anything's possible. I almost thought my mortgage check was lost in the mail this month. I mailed it out earlier this month and started getting nervous because as of 2 days ago it hadn't cleared. Finally it cleared yesterday. I pay most of the bills online or by phone but the mortgage charges us for that so I just mail it, now I'm thinking otherwise. Uggh, what a pain!

I have never had a check get lost in the mail (most of our bills can be paid in person here in town) but I have mailed off a christmas gift in a small package that was never received.

Updated

I have never had a check get lost in the mail (most of our bills can be paid in person here in town) but I have mailed off a christmas gift in a small package that was never received.

I think it has happened to me once in 47 years--at least 25 of those "bill paying" years!

We lost count at 30 outgoing items in 10 years. One was a check to an investment company for $10,000. It was in an Express Mail envelope. The PO could trace it from our town to the large city PO for sorting, where it disappeared and has never been found. Last year 3 tax statements/bills on vehicles from the county never made it to us. By the time we discovered it, we had to pay a hefty penalty. Numerous others also said the same thing and had to pay the penalty also. Come to find out, someone at the county was embezzeling $. This summer, we never received 2 statements from our cell phone company. The first time, we were on vacation, out of cell range when they left us a courtesy call. Well two days later, they cut our service. My husband was livid. They then tacked on a reactivation fee. That really made him livid and he gave them what for and they issued a credit. Luckily the second time it didn't come, it appeared on the next month's statement and he went in to the local office and paid it. We've tried mailing from several of the different communities in our area, and have had mail lost from all of them. I don't think the automated sorters can eat that many pieces of mail.

With my post office? The odds are about 80%. I don't post mail in my town anymore because very important documents were always going missing and WE started looking like the irresponsible parties!

Verizon should cut you some slack, especially since they may have been the party who lost the check.

Out of a whole stack I mailed just before going off on vacation, 2 of those checks did not make it to their destinations. Care to guess which 2?? *L* One was the house payment - discovered upon checking all the accounts when we got home. The other was the full credit card payment for the card I had with us on vacation!! That's how we found out - the card was declined due to the payment not being received! ARGH!!!

(all other checks made their destinations - very very strange! and we did later hear that the credit card place had been having 'troubles' .... but the house payment had always made it!)

It happens. We've had 1 check that we never received from a customer. We had 1 check that our neighbor received and forgot to give it to us.

That said... I am the financial person in charge of business and personal banking. I never go more than 24 hours without somewhat reconciling my accounts. I use online banking, rarely write a check except to our vendors.

This is something I'm just on top of daily. I understand you're not running a business but we run our personal accounts like our business accounts and we're on top of them constantly.

My advice would be to reconcile your finances regularly, do online banking with tracking numbers.

You're lucky they are refunding you. In my business, I charge late fees and don't waive them.