Page:Roy Ralph Hottman - Practical Collection Procedure (1923).pdf/82

68 letters sent, to the ledger account, is of particular value. One is enabled at a glance to determine just how difficult it was to collect a previous account, and just where to com- mence in collecting a current bill.

Multigraph Letters.

While in some instances, houses are able to secure a perfect match for filling in the date, the salutation, and the amount in multigraphed letters, in the great majority of cases a perfect match is not secured, and to me it seems, therefore, that multigraphed letters should not be used. The urgency of a letter, the directness, the per- sonality, is entirely lost when a debtor is enabled to ascer- tain that he has been sent a multigraphed form letter, and a consequent delay in remitting ensues. No debtor’s attitude is improved by the belief that he is not worth the trouble of a personally dictated letter. Even though a good match is obtainable in multigraphed letters, compe- tent stenographers are necessary to get the salutation cor- tectly spaced and perfectly parallel with the body of the letter, so as to give it the appearance of a personal letter, and to fill in the amount so precisely that it is impossible to know it is a multigraphed letter. This is frequently impossible.

I have seen multigraphed collection letters that were so carelessly filled in and so imperfectly matched, that ab- solutely no one would consider them anything but a mul- tigraphed letter. One of them in particular had alto- gether different shades of ink, the body of the letter was “shaded” due to faulty multigraphing, and the paper