Sigh. Looks like I’ve managed to confuse the folks over at Fidelity. They responded to Tuesday’s email, saying

When a bill is paid with a check (which your bill for $223.85 was), the amount will not be deducted from your account history until the check is paid, so that is why you see it in the billpay “Recent Payments” and not the “Recent History” in your mySmart Cash account.

If you take your current available to withdraw balance ($322.98) and subtract the uncleared check $223.85, you get $99.13, which is $.03 off from your expected total of $99.10. The extra $.03 is from your interest payment on January 30, 2009.

Totally reasonable, makes perfect sense.

Except….

It doesn’t quite match with what the Bill Pay system says:

<Vendor> received your payment electronically on 02/24/2009. Your payment was posted to your <vendor> account on 02/24/2009

Additionally, when I check my <Vendor>  statement online, it says:

$223.85 – paid on 2/24/2009

Clearly there is a disconnect here. So I called up Fidelity, explained the situation, and got transfered to a very nice Bill Pay specialist named Amber. After going through my account, and putting me on hold a few times, Amber came back and basically said

I’m sorry, I don’t know why it’s not showing up.

Awesome.

It appears that one Fidelity system shows the bill was “paid electronically”; another system shows it was “paid by check”, which won’t show up as a debit on my account until that check is “cashed”.

I logged into my vendor’s website, which, of course, shows the account as “paid on 2/24/2009”

Amber asked me to check again tomorrow or Friday, as it may take time as “it’s making its way through the system” (even though another bill, paid on the same day, shows up correctly).

The saga continues. Ain’t technology grand?

And that’s not cash purchases….

It’s been a bad couple of weeks.

Original idea: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

I opened a Fidelity mySmartCash account in December to consolidate my bill pay and other activities. The e-bill feature they have is much better than what E*Trade currently offers, and the mySmartCash has the possibility of easing my cash flow between multiple savings accounts.

But I’m having a hard time using Fidelity because the website doesn’t do a very good job of showing me how much money I have in there at any one time. Tonight I wrote them to complain:

Hello,

My “Recent Payments” box in my Bill Pay section does not match my “Recent History” in my smartcash account. My “Recent Payments” shows three payments:

2/20: $242.64

2/24: $223.85

2/24: $39

My “Recent History” shows only two payments:

2/20: $242.64

2/24: $39

Yet the bill for $223.85 is shown as “paid on 2/24/2009″. The bill for $39 also shows “paid on 2/24/2009″ so I’m not sure why two bills paid on the same day don’t both show up.

Additionally, even if this is just a case of the bill not yet registering in one part of your system, the balance total would be wrong. The current “total” balance shown is $361.98; if and when the $223.85 bill registers, the “total” should show $138.13. Yet the “available balance” shows $222.98. I’ve deposited $966.52 since recently opening this account. My history says I’ve withdrawn $643.57; add in the expected withdrawal of $223.85, that would be $867.42 withdrawn; that should show an “available balance” of $99.10. It’s not clear where the additional $39.03 is coming from.

My experience with the Fidelity website in the less than 90 days I’ve had them gives me tremendous pause, and I’m extremely hesitant to continue using this service, as I don’t have great comfort that the website is showing me complete and accurate information at all times. Please help me understand the situation and provide me with some level of comfort that might convince me to move the rest of my banking and brokerage from E*Trade to Fidelity.

Thanks,

Yeah, I should probably keep my mouth shut about the $39 (and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a third part of their system hasn’t picked up the $39 payment and $0.03 in interest, for example).

A bank site should be up-to-the-minute. There’s no technical reason it can’t be. If this puny website can show you the absolute latest information, they can too.

Let’s see if things resolve themselves, and what Fidelity has to say about it.

Well, that didn’t last long.

Thirteen days after I predicted we’ve seen the stock market bottom of 7,949.09, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dips under it at 7,936.75.

Sigh.

Only 12 points lower, but lower still. It’s the new low for 2009. Dare I suggest it won’t close lower the rest of this year? I do think we’ve seen (something close to) the bottom this year. I maintain we’ll be higher on January 1, 2010 than we were on January 1, 2009. (That would be anything above 8,776.39, or 839 points to the upside. Whew.)

Of course, it just might be easier to test the 52-week low of 7,867.37.

But ya gots to be optimistic about something in this world.