LOST BANK BOOKS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23170, 17 October 1938, Page 5

LOST BANK BOOKS

POST OFFICE PROBLEM CURIOyS EXPLANATIONS [from our own correspondent] LONDON. Sept. 22 Out of the 11,000,000 people who put their money in the Post Office Sayings bank, nearly 65,000, or one in every 200, lose their books in the course of a year. A special branch has been created at Savings Bank headquarters, named the Lost Books branch, to deal with all these losses. When books are reported lost the Post Office wants to know how. Hero aro some recent replies "My dog has eaten the book. I am opening another account, as 1 cannot open tho dog." "I Jost my book in church, so there ■is no hope of finding it." Books are often kept in strange places. A frequent hiding place is be, hind pictures. One woman kept hers in an oven, but forgot ono week to tako it out before cooking the Sunday joint —with unfortunate results. It is usual in cases of lost books to ask applicants the amount standing to their credit. Most depositor® know approximately tho amount due to them, but there is a curious tendency to under-estimate. An extreme example is that of a modest lady who claimed £IOO when the balance in the official ledgers was £IOOO. Uv wa J' °' °. x " planation she wrote that, though she knew she had £IOOO. she did not want to apjiear to be claiming more than was her due. On an average 500 books a week aro returned undelivered or uncalled for at post offices.