Do you remember renting a telly?

[Needtosoundoffandbreathe]

We did as students and when we got out first jobs. It was a bit more to rent a video too, for those weekend trips to Blockbuster.

Renting appliances was perfect for students.

I guess now second hand tellies are cheap enough and most landlords provide washing machines.

In the 60s/70s/80s it made sense as tvs were so much less reliable and you could call an engineer if you needed one.

The first one I bought was from Boots and ex boyfriend, a PhD student gave it back when I bought my first property 🤣

Yes from Visionhire. If it went wrong they came out the same day to mend it.

Maybe that was Amstrad Sir Alan Sugars sattelite company ? The dishes were huge

Yes and I remember those remotes too.

they had a 3mm jack, with a huge lead, and two buttons - up and down. All they did was channel up or down. And considering the only channels were 1, 2, ITV and the very new 4, it wasn’t much of a scrolling saver!

Yep. Another one with good 'ol Radio Rentals (or rather my parents were). I still remember the thrill when they brought us an upgrade telly complete with a remote control, no more getting up to change the channel!

Yep, radio rentals

Nobody bought a TV back in the 60's, 70's. They were so unreliable and bloody expensive. I remember as a child being sent down to the shop to pay the 50p a week and then going next door to the nationwide to pay our ( sisters and me ) savings in - probably 5 p each. Then heading up to pay for the furniture - Arding and Hobbs @Clapham Junction . Credit back then for women wasnt credit cards, it was a signed agreement with the shop, mostly needing the mans co signature

Yes, we rented from Rumbelows. I think we did rent colour before it, but I am certain we got a new, better colour TV for the Royal Wedding in 1981. I also recall one of those ‘every boomer and gen x was better off than we are now’ threads where the reasoning was they’d worked out TVs cost (comparatively) a shed load of money back then. Then followed post after post pointing out that we didn’t own them (you ‘nana).

My parents had a remote control..Me.

Yes.

I remember discovering that my parents were still renting the VHS recorder we got in the 80s in the late 90s.

I was gobsmacked as whilst they probably needed to rent it when they first got it, they had more than enough to buy one later.

I rented a black and white one as a student in the 1970s. When colour TVs became common, the company said I could keep the B&W one when I wanted to terminate the contract, as I was moving. So I had a free TV and kept it for years before upgrading to a colour one (which I paid for in cash, being employed and quite flush by then).

Yes, thirty-odd years ago in a house share. One of my housemates and her boyfriend used to commandeer the front room (where the TV was) most weekends, which meant that the rest of us couldn’t watch TV for the duration. Very annoying.

My ex had a tv he bought cheaply (as it was an ex-rental one) in the mid-90s and it "lived" til 2013!

You wouldn't get that longevity now!

No, we owned ours (born 1985 and my parents always owned it) but I do remember we had an old black and white one with an ariel attached that we used to watch when there were thunderstorms. The TV I remember was a Grundig and it had a faux wood case and very clicky channel buttons.

I bought our TV in 2012, just after the Olympics when we realised the one we had was so un-widescreen it was cutting off the winners of the races! It's still going! I love our TV, I hope it never breaks.

My parents always rented one and we had black and white for ages. I also rented one, and a video, as a student in the 90s.

Yes. They were so expensive to buy than nowadays. When renting you could upgrade every year if you wanted.
I remember buying our first TV when DH and I moved in together and it cost a huge amount. We replaced it with our first flat screen tube TV and it cost nearly 1k. It was a huge 32” screen and we would never have got it in the house if BIL hadn’t been visiting when it was delivered. When we replaced it with a modern flat screen DH and DS struggled to move it through the patio doors so it spent the winter on the patio. They then smashed it up to get rid of it.

I worked in radio rentals on a Saturday when I was at college. We were able to take the new vhs releases home at the weekend!

I demonstrated the new features such as teletext 😄, did new rental contracts, and processed the monthly rental payments. It was actually quite a fun place to work

Yes! Radio rentals.
I remember the day we got our first colour TV. I’m only 58!

Yes and I think our oven was rented too until I was 10 or so.

That's why I upgraded my CRT telly too - the sides of the programmes were getting chopped off!

I worked in radio rentals! Had guys coming in to sign up to adult channels. I used to tell them I couldn't do it and sent them away!

My Dad was a tv engineer for Radio Rentals, he'd often bring tv's home and fix them on our kitchen table.

Some weekends he'd be able to bring things like the Atari console home or the latest tv or top loading vhs player.
When they started renting out videos he'd bring those home too.

We got our first TV to watch the World Cup in 66! Dad had just started tv meter emptying and it was a perk of the job.