Post Dated Cheque

[Tarser]

I'm confused what a post dated cheque is. If I send a cheque, three or four weeks before the payment has to be made, to pay my credit card bill and I date the cheque as the final date it has to reach them by, is this a post dated cheque? (The credit card company says not to send post dated cheques).

I think it's more likely to be post dated if I have written a date beyond the due date. Explanations on the internet aren't clear to me.

[Jackdaw33]

It is post-dated because the bank cannot process it on receipt.

[jno]

I think post-dated basically means "not today's date". If you send a cheque with a date later than the due date they won't be able to cash it, so you'll be in default and have to pay charges.

What theyr'e asking for, I imagine, is that you send cheques they can bank straight away so they don't havo to arrange them in piles according to when they can be banked. I can see their point.

Have you considred setting up a direct debit to pay your bills on the due date each month? It saves a lot of hassle.

[Mamyalynne]

Be wary too, post dated cheques sometimes do clear the system and could on occasion leave you overdrawn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-dated_cheque#UK

[Tarser]

So, essentially, if you pay by cheque, you HAVE to pay it earlier than the due date as it's too risky to rely on the post to deliver it exactly on the latter.

[EdmundD]

Have you considered paying your credit card by online transfer? I pay mine by this method on the due date so there is no delay with the post.

[Tarser]

EdmundD: I used to pay it online but a couple of things made me go back to the old ways. One was a scam attempt and another is when you set up a new payee now, it is so complicated, I gave up.

[jno]

I set up online payments when a cheque in the mail was delayed by the Christmas rush, and I ended up paying a lot of interest the next month.

[Jackdaw33]

Phone the card issuer and arrange a DD. You can pay the minimum amount, a fixed amount or the whole balance. You can then forget al about it.

[jno]

I'd definitely recommend a DD to pay the whole balance if you can afford it, and pay no interest at all, and not have to worry abuot postal hold-ups either.

[mumstheword1]

Banks do not recognise post dated cheques. At one time all cheques were checked but not now. It would be very rare for the date to noticed. X

[Skyline D]

A post dated cheque is any cheque that you give a later date to the date you are writing it on. So yes, if you write a cheque dated now for three weeks from now that IS a post dated cheque and your card company doesn't want it. They don't want it because they have better things to do with their time than sit on cheques waiting for a date to take them to the bank. They get cheques in, they want to process them straight away and put them in the bank, not have them sitting on someone's desk for three weeks.

[Skyline D]

@mumstheword our bank regularly picks up and pulls out wrongly dated cheques, usually the other way about (more than 6 months old) than post dated right enough but they definitely do check the dates. It's simply not true to say it's "very rare" to be noticed. Equally it sometimes isn't noticed so you can't assume a post dated cheque isn't going to be banked for a few weeks.