Depends which side your on lol. If its your account , then you want the funder to delay to give you the opportunity to sell a renewal and retain the customer.

If your on the other side then yeah its very frustrating, I like the above idea about threatening bad reviews, we normally have the merchant threaten legal action if its been more than 24 hours and miraculously they get the payoff letter a couple minutes later

Another good strategy is to have merchant ask for balance or transaction report instead of payoff letter so it doesnt draw any flags at the funder. Then when we call to verify balance we can get payment instructions if we do not already have it for that funder.