Be Excellent To Each Other

Noticed a new shop called Brighthouse when out shopping today so went to have a look. I couldn’t believe what I found inside, white goods, TVs, sofas all with inflated prices to start with, then huge interest rates paid off weekly.

I honed in on one example laughingly called the “Managers Special”

WII U Premium Pack- Starting price £416, then pay it off via loads of weekly payment making the total cost at the end £730, its £280 on Amazon!

There were 2 guys speaking to an "adviser" with the intent of buying something, I could hear the girl telling them there were set up charges for the credit and other things so doubt the WII U costs ever more.

These places should not be legal as they just leach of people on low incomes

There's one in my home town too. I don't know what the prices are like if you buy stuff outright, if you even can, but I'm not going near the place to find out.

Part of an old job used to involve turning up at client's houses, seeing the thing they'd bought from Brighthouse, then getting the bastards to take it back. They seem to have stepped into the role that places like Radio Rentals used to occupy - a way for poor people to have recentish kit.

It does all hinge on people's ability to acquire shiny things whilst shutting out all rational thought relating to the cost thereof, of course.

Get a free older TV off Freecycle, if you need one and have no money. Save up what you'd pay to Brighthouse weekly and get a new one with that, later.

The WII U price was £416, looking on their website it would appear that you could pay £472 in total for it.

The £730 is including insurances etc. That was the displayed price on the ticket in the shop.

They also say that you have to have insurance cover when buying their overpriced goods, I'm guessing their customers don’t have this and probably can’t get any sort of credit to pay monthly premiums either so most will end up buying it from Brighthouse and paying the larger price.

Would also guess that the staff are incentivised to sell as many “cover” products as possible to customers, easy sell as most people who shop there will have no credit available to them anywhere else and will just want the TV or Sofa.

That would be interesting, iirc it's illegal to sell credit on the condition that a customer buys another product first. Whatever it may be. They might strongly imply no insurance, no credit... but the truth is, just like Radio Rentals or wherever, if something happens to the device the worst they can do is ask for the full amount then and there because "their" item has broken.

I detest them with a passion. They are there purely to exploit people who can least afford it and I'd be happy to see them die out.

The last thing I saw in a window was a 2 seater settee. Nice enough and you'd get one from Ikea for 300 quid. By the time you'd paid all the credit, insurance and extended warranty it was over a grand. I know it's a free market but that kind of thing is just plain nasty.

Did some Google searching on them, apparently one of the options then give to people who default on payments is to return the goods which they then sell to other people.

The whole arrangement is renting until you make the last payment. Lots of people saying they were told that if they didn’t get all the insurances then they couldn’t get credit.

In many cases people will be paying for 2nd hand goods.

Brighthouse? Shitehouse, more like.

Eh? Eh? Is this on?

That would require the average IQ being raised by about thirty points, I fear. The main reason for places like this existing is the fact that your average chav is far too lazy and/or stupid to work out by themselves how much of a ripoff the deals are.

They also deliberately site their shops as close to the towns job/benefits office as possible.

Rarely see anyone in the Bromley branch but I suppose they don't need many customers to stay profitable.

I think it's taken from the old "Catalogue" system where you could pay way over the odds but pay over a longer period of time. Only with that it was your "friends" or family coming after you and knee capping you if you missed your weekly payment.

Bear in mind I'm from the working class though so a lot of you won't know what I'm on about.

You posh cunts.

I'm not.

Grattan Catalogues. A friend of my grandparents was into them and always brought one over to try and get my grandmother signed up, but she hated things like that.

Empire stores. Kays. Not Grattan. They were RUBBISH.

TOYS SECTION!!!

My mum was the Grattan catalogue organiser for the neighbourhood. She hated doing it as I recall, but you got discounts and vouchers and shit for doing it, so it was worth her while as we wouldn't have been able to afford anything in it without it!
She also did farepack hampers, so we could earn enough vouchers to get a christmas hamper every year.

I'm certainly not posh

There are a lot worse than the Catalogues, the WII U they sell breaks down like this

Cash Price £416.96 - (20-30% more that most shops) payable @ £9.09 over 52 weeks total cost £472.8

That part is like the Catalogues, still steep but subprime credit is a higher risk.

What they do next is bully and misinform people into taking “Optional Service Cover” and “Damage Liability Cover” on the items they buy.

Buying that same WII U with all the cover would cost £16.09 a week or £836.68 over 52 weeks

They insist that people have home insurance as these goods are provided on a HP or rented basis, the staff also tell people that if they don’t take this out they will not get the credit. They also “fine” people £2.70 per agreement per week if they miss payments, things like a bed are 2 agreements one for the frame and one for the mattress

On the flip side they do have people who walk in there and buy goods with no intention of ever paying for them, but that is not a reason to rob every customer blind.

They turnover 200 million a year, mostly at the expense of the most needy and vulnerable people in society

Kays weren't too bad if I remember rightly. They charged over the odds, yes, (something that was a hundred quid in a shop would probably be a hundred and twenty or thirty from Kays) but there was no interest on the payments unless you went for the ludicrously long terms.
I think my Mum was an agent for a while. She was certainly important enough to get hard-backed versions of the catalogue from time to time.

I took this earlier from the Brighthouse in Dudley.

£739 for a no name 32" TV is very expensive but over a grand with the insurance charge? Shocking.

Seems like a perfect business!

[/Tory]

Though it's Brighthouse's brand now, I think Baird is probably a pretty big name in television.

It's a brand that dates back to the 1920's, but is just a badge these days. They'll just be Chinese generic crap.

I think one of the TV rental places used to own the brand. Its been passed around a fair bit.

Do you remember "Matsui"? That was a quality Japanese brand that was..

No wait the other one

"I can fix anything except my attitude!"

Much like paying £35 a month for an iPhone for two years, innit?

Not really. With your phone contract you're paying for the calls/data service as well as the hardware.

But a SIM only deal is about £15 a month, so there's a clear chunk of your line rental that's paying for the handset.
An iPhone 5 without the subsidy is £500, so roughly £20 per month over two years which brings you back to the £35 line rental.

If Bright House were doing your iPhone you'd be paying over £100 a month for two years.

For a while in around 1994, DSG/Matsui were selling the best budget VCR's on the market which outperformed many top models. I had a stereo one which was excellent and would play anything. All rebadged from that big manufacturer who used in be based in Turkey of course.

Did you know that the CPC actually has DSG branding in the ROM? Amstrad were seriously considering various companies sell the computer and not putting it out on the Amstrad name. So DSG would be the sole UK distributer under their Saisho brand! The full list of selectable brands in the ROM are:

Amstrad
ISP (A brandname of Orion, see below)
Triumph (nobody is 100% sure)
Saisho (brand used by DSG Group)
Solovox (Comet, so Sugar hedging his bets here!)
Awa (Australian electronics company)
Schneider (German electronics company)
Orion (the people who actually manufactured the CPC)

In the event only Germany (Schneider) and Australia (Awa) used non Amstrad branding. And even they reverted to Amstrad branding in later years.

And if DSG had got that exclusivity deal, this is what a CPC 464 would have looked like on boot up.