I bought furniture at Artvan Furniture using a no interest/no tax promotion. To avoid paying late, I started paying my bills online. However, Artvan uses HSBC's Retail Services to provide their financing. HSBC has a practice of picking a due date a sticking to it, regardless of what day it falls on. That said, if a payment due date falls on a Satruday or Sunday the payment will not post until the following Monday and therefore, be late. They clearly state this on their payment pages. If your payment falls on a weekend, you must post no later than 3pm on Wednesday.
So, HSBC has effectively guaranteed that you will experience severely shortened payment periods due to their inflexibility. Other banks also use this practice (Chase as an example). Most reasonable financial institutions will defer the due date until the first business day after a weekend or holiday.
It is clear that these devious practices are strategies cooked up by the bank officials to bleed as much of our money out of us as they can. I'm sure people get hefty bonuses for cooking up these schemes. Personally, if a payment is posted electronically on a business day 24 hours prior to the due date, it should be considered "on time" regardless of what day the due date falls on. Beware of this practice.
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