I feel bad for the paint contractor, but seriously, I'm not responsible for their business practices

[politicat]

Background: I bought a house for my mom. It needed some minor rehab and updating, but it's not bad. Since I can't be there (Phoenix area, summer, have own job), we are paying people to do the work, and it's been a reasonable number so far.

I mailed the paint contractor's final check 10 days ago, and as of yesterday, it still hadn't arrived. (That tells me something went wrong at the Phoenix distro center, and that got confirmed this morning when the mail arrived and I had an extremely chewed half an envelope, no check, no copy of the invoice, and a "sorry, undeliverable" note from the Phoenix distro center. It looks like a jam in the sorter, which doesn't happen often, but does happen. I'm not blaming USPS - they do a generally stellar job. It wasn't their check, but it was from the same batch I sent, so my Sherlock sense and the fact that their check hasn't arrived or been cashed tells me whatever it was, it was catastrophic.)

Unfortunately, the contractor was apparently desperate for the check to make today's payroll. (Which freaks the business side of me out. If you're running that close to the bone, that's a business in trouble, and is tragic, because they do good work.) I got a panicky call at 7 PM last night, long after there was anything I could do yesterday.

The only thing I could do was express them a second check. (The bank account numbers they sent me to do a wire transfer didn't work. I would have happily, but there's no point sending a wire to a wrong or non-existent account.) I'm a thousand miles away, so it's not like I could drive the check over, and Western Union doesn't do point to point transfers anymore. (Not to mention that my bank doesn't give large sums of cash over the counter.)

I am abjectly sorry for their trouble, but really? My little $2k job is the difference between making it and not? I'm just the customer.

Anybody know if this is standard in other parts of the country? Locally, everyone here seems to run on a 30 day. Or have an idea for unjamming their bind? They don't take credit cards, so paypal/similar is out. They're convinced they are giving me the right account numbers, even though my bank says no.