NEW WAY TO RAY BILLS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10966, 5 January 1912, Page 4

NEW WAY TO RAY BILLS.

LADIES TOO BUSY I*o SIGN CHEQUES.

A novel remedy for the chronic complaint of tradespeople that the/'richest customers will not pay their bills" has just been invented by the Fifth Avenue. Bank of New York, which boasts among its depositors more wealthy ladies than any other metropolitan bank. "If you are too busy with your home and social duties to sign cheques every month in settlement of bills, send the bills to us and we will attend to them," is the kindly message addressed to its fashionable clients by the president of the bank.

The message has. been received with a sigh of relief by harassed hostesses, who af the beginning of another socio! season find the duties of preparing and signing cheques "too bothersome." Lite many other New York banks, the Fifth Avenue establishment caters_ for the comfort of lady depositors in truly magnificent style. It provides tliem with luxuriously furnished rooms, where they can meet friends, write letters, arid go over accounts. "We want our women depositors," the bank explains, "to let us help them whenever they get mto difficulties over their accounts or balances. If their cheque-books become confused we assign a special clerk to reconcile the accounts. AVe thus relieve the ladies of all figuring and try to make banking as easy as possible." The new department involves the appointment of a special staff of clerk', who. at the beginning of each month, visit the customers and collect all outstanding bills, which they carry to the bank for examination and settlement. The customer may then call at the bank a day or two later and affix her signature to numerous cheques, or if she has no time to do that, a clerk will call at her mansion and receive her cheque for the total amount disbursed. The new. scheme is designed not only for the. comfort of depositors, but to save tradespeople the terrible predicament whjcli recently overtook a millinery firm, which filed a petition of bankruptcy on the ground that its fashionable clients were too lazy to pay their bills.