Posted on 02/16/2015 10:43:40 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
There’s a minor domestic crisis in any family when the fridge-freezer breaks down. Wasted food; no fresh milk; pools of water on the kitchen floor. But for some households, the demise of the washing machine, the tumble dryer or the telly is more than a hiccup – it throws up a major financial challenge.
That’s where firms like BrightHouse come in: pop into one of its 291 stores, and instead of having to find several hundred pounds up front, you can replace a busted appliance for a much more manageable £10-£15 a week.
Except there’s a sting in the tail. When MPs on the all-party parliamentary group on debt and personal finance looked into these “rent-to-own” retailers, of which BrightHouse is the leader, they found that by the time delivery charges, insurance and servicing are loaded on, consumers who can ill afford it end up paying several times over. One fridge-freezer with a five-year service plan, which sells for £644 at middle-class favourite John Lewis, ended up costing £1,716.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Rent-A-Center has been doing this for years. When I got out of college I split an apartment with a friend from college. He worked at Rent-a-center, I worked at Credit Thrift (American General Finance). He dealt with people too poor to get a loan at 29% interest. I dealt with people who had been paying off the same 90 day Same As Cash loan for the last decade.
Between us we knew every working poor person in the county.
BTW: Great place to buy outright is a Rent to Own store as they reposes rented items, they repair, clean them and either re-rent them or sell them. If you had the cash you could get anything from TV’s and washers to nice furniture all for next to nothing.
bump
We have a new dryer that rarely gets used. We have a space behind our garage that is rarely used so I had hubby put up clotheslines years ago. It’s actually just as easy to hang them and fold them as I get them in as it is to load and unload the dryer.
I remember telling my girlfriend that “Some day we’ll be able to go for a fancy sit down dinner at McDonalds”.
LOL we were downright destitute.
I don’t know if it’s still true, but a friend of mine (American) married a British girl while stationed over there, and after he got out they lived in England for a couple of years. He tells the story about their electric meter...it was “coin operated”. You want power, you have to put coins in the meter and but it by the hour, day, whatever.
They would get up in the morning and run to the meter and drop in the coins to get ready for work. And don’t dare come home at night without some change.
“BTW: Great place to buy outright is a Rent to Own store...”
I bought three large nightstands with drawers from a rental place to use as a clothes dresser back in college. Almost 40 years later they are in my basement storing various parts.
I gave my son the small fridge I bought for my dorm room so he could have it at college. The very next week I found a slightly larger one at Goodwill for $20! Beats having to run upstairs for a beer.
That’s true in some places in Europe. We ate at McDonalds in Oslo once. It was close to 60USD for the four of us. (2 kids, 2 adults).
by the time delivery charges, insurance and servicing are loaded on, consumers who can ill afford it end up paying several times over. One fridge-freezer with a five-year service plan, which sells for £644 at middle-class favourite John Lewis, ended up costing £1,716.
There's no two ways about it - being poor is expensive.
One fridge-freezer with a five-year service plan, which sells for £644 at middle-class favourite John Lewis, ended up costing £1,716.
That refrigerator in US is on 2300 dollars. Our refrigerators are 3 grand and up. The one I bought this Summer was about 3200. They are getting a bargain and should appreciate it instead of complaining.
Never saw the meter stuff on any British shows. Insane.
It was in the 60’s.
Many are not allowed to have clothes lines anymore. I know I am not. I would LOVE a clothes line, but the HOA says no way.....we can't even have the wooden one with lines that you can sit on the Lanai.....it won't happen. Many are in the same situation.
Headline should read High Tax Britain...ofcourse, that’d never happen.
Point taken, but the high cost of tax-subsidized benefits they consume makes it tough for working class Brits to get meaningful employment which would keep them off of the edge.
Same deal on car leasing her in the USA
Troy Aikman?
Yes. Just like here, priorities don’t matter to the UK Government or those who live off other taxpayers. I was behind two middle-aged women at Costco last week. They had 18 eggs and some other food items, plus two expensive perfumes in the cart. When the cashier had wrung up the purchases, he said ‘I can only use the EBT card for the food’. They said yes, ok. The total bill was around $180 dollars. They had EBT cards and were buying two bottles of perfume for $160. When the Beatles were in their heyday, the tax bite was 95% on the wealthy. When I worked in Britain in the 80’s, making 1/4th of my wage in America, my tax bite was 50%. I was making peanuts and they took 50% of my income! Unfortunately, that’s Socialism and it’s coming here soon. If you are working, you are carrying many more than just yourself and your family.
On a slightly different topic....
Watch any BBC presentations on history....
like the American revolution against King George,
or on Turing and the invention of computers....
After each segment they have a Professor from some UK university giving analysis of what we just saw....
...and they all have bad teeth.
My husband hung hooks on the walls of our family room. Before we went to bed, we’d hang up our wet clothes. In the morning, we’d take the clothes down and unhook the lines. (The lines had loops knotted into the ends)
Took us ten minutes after breakfast and wasn’t a daily thing.
That is why it is so important to teach delayed gratification and thrift. A small set aside of $25 per week would cushion a person against these likely situations. A good credit rating allows for a Same As Cash deal where $60 per month over a 12 month period pays for MOST appliances.
Poverty is a problem that is exacerbated by the immediate gratification society we live in today.
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