TIME PAYMENT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4917, 18 December 1925, Page 4

TIME PAYMENT

“A PERNICIOUS SYSTEM.”

SIR GEORGE ELLIOT’S WARNING.

The good old-fashioned notion of buying an article only when one has: money to pay for it seems ,to have gone by the board. Almost any article can be, and is nowi being, purchased on the payment of a few a week and upwards. That ,the system its pernicious needs no argument; it seriously affects legitimate business ; it is costly in the extreme to ,the purchaser, and it tends to breed a habit of reckless extravagance.

The foregoing statement was made by Sir George Elliot, chairman of directors of the Bank of New Zealand, during the course of his. address at the half-yearly genera,! meeting at Wellington last week. “There is a matter,” he said, “which I think should be brought before you, and that is the great extent to which the hire-purchase, or timepaymen't system of dealing in articles from a gramophone to a motor-car, from a perambulator to a building section, is becoming a feature of this country’s tradte. There are, of course, exceptional occasions when the sys>tem may be of advantage, but, generally speaking, it is a dangerous practice for buyer and seller alike. Any serious financial setback would have a disastrous effect on those whose trade is largely made up of the selling of goods on the time-paymenl system.”