To be delighted that Brighthouse is about to go bust?

[AgeLikeWine]

It’s not all bad news at the moment. .

Brighthouse is a nasty, exploitative business which rips off the poor, the uneducated and the vulnerable by selling household goods at inflated prices on finance at extortionate interest rates. Their business model relies on creating spirals of debt in a similar way to Wonga.

Normally I would sympathise with the staff of businesses which go bust, but not in this case. Good riddance.

@waxonfeckoff Don't forget the suggestion that local loansharks are better than Brighthouse as they don't insist you spend your debt with them...

True @lyralalala.

Do Loansharks truly exist? I have never known anyone that has known one, where do you find them? Not that I want one, I’m just curious as to how you would even meet one, is it a case of knowing someone that knows one and then they ‘put a word in for you’ sort of thing?

Yes they exist. In my case the loanshark (who amusingly insisted on being called a "local money lender") found me. They're very good at knowing who in their community is likely to be struggling. I was offered loans several times before I eventually took one for the school shoes I mentioned earlier in the thread.

The school I used to work in covered a women's refuge. Whilst the addresses of those places are meant to be secret everyone locally knew. Including the money lenders. Staff had a terrible time trying to protect the women from the charming lenders who seemed to offer a glimmer of hope at difficult times.

They target people at their lowest ebb.

Do they really beat folks up if they don’t pay? I’m surprised that they get folks at their lowest ebb because I used to live in a street that can only be described as ‘Benefit Street’ and not once did one ever target anyone there.

I haven’t read all of the thread so didn’t know about you getting school shoes, if you don’t mind me asking how much did you borrow and how much did you pay back?

It's all very well say ask someone else to do your washing etc ,my parents would glad of do some washing for me but we are a family of four i have the boy ,s uniforms ,dh work uniform ,my youngest is disabled and still wears nappies and we have loads of washing ,if it was just me being I might not bother with a,washing machine but it absolutely is a necessity ,I don't think anyone is saying Bright House is a reputable company but just for some therapist really an alternative

There is*

I wonder if the Queen was still invested in Bright House. 🤔

@inappropriatefemale They can do yes. They also charge people premiums for late payments, or put up their interest. Some who are also into other forms of crime end up putting pressure on people to do jobs for them, storing drugs in their home is a big one.

If you lived in an area like I used too then I'd bet you some people used money lenders. No-one in my area knew that I did... I'd imagine some people were entirely unaware of his money lending habits. He was quite active in the community in other ways. Everyone knew him, he knew everyone. He didn't go about with it tattooed on his head.

I borrowed £10 and paid back £1 a week for 10 months. I was also one of the lucky ones - I never missed a payment, I never pissed him off (I now know of someone who was 'fined' £20 for giving him a dirty look) and, crucially, I was able to resist the offers of "Are you sure you don't want to borrow more?" and "Do you want £10 to treat your kids to something nice?"

That is what hooks people in with loansharks long term.

@mrspotatoheadssheewee good point. The bbc website says her investment was due to finish in 2019 or 2020. I didnt read the whole article but her portfolio included Threshers that went bust too so it doesn’t look too good!!

@lyralalala so you borrowed £10 and paid back £420?! that is fucking shocking!

I think I probably did live in a street like yours, and I was on benefits most of the time too and I was ‘friends’ with lots of the other Jeremy Kyle type folk (I’m not criticising folks on benefits before anyone reads this that way, I just meant that they were questionable people iyswim) and if there had been such a person handing money out money then believe me I would have known, if only for the fact that my so called friends would have just loved me, or anyone, to get in such a mess that they would need a loan shark, Christ they needed something to gossip about put it that way.

Why aren’t these folks stuck in to the police? I can imagine them trying to pressurise folks into keeping drugs in their homes, I knew folks like that back then but they weren’t loansharks, they were just nasty bastards.

Wrong calculations sorry!

You paid back £42 for a £10, fucking hell, it also speaks volumes that they pressurise folks into taking a loan, they need to control folks people like that, they make me sick and are worse than smack dealers.

I think I probably did live in a street like yours, and I was on benefits most of the time too and I was ‘friends’ with lots of the other Jeremy Kyle type folk (I’m not criticising folks on benefits before anyone reads this that way, I just meant that they were questionable people iyswim) and if there had been such a person handing money out money then believe me I would have known, if only for the fact that my so called friends would have just loved me, or anyone, to get in such a mess that they would need a loan shark, Christ they needed something to gossip about put it that way.

I was someone the loan shark had known for more than 14 years and it was made very clear to me that discussing his money lending with anyone was not advisable. People don't gossip about people like that. It's not worth the risk. It's not about embarassment or shame, it's fear.

Why aren’t these folks stuck in to the police? I can imagine them trying to pressurise folks into keeping drugs in their homes, I knew folks like that back then but they weren’t loansharks, they were just nasty bastards.

Same reason they didn't gossip about them. They didn't want "mugged" when they were walking home or find their home victim of a suspicious fire.

You paid back £42 for a £10, fucking hell, it also speaks volumes that they pressurise folks into taking a loan, they need to control folks people like that, they make me sick and are worse than smack dealers.

It starts friendly. You could almost be mistaken for thinking it's just a loan that you'll pay back the £10 (although I knew because I'd seen it before). My situation was friendly the whole way through because the entire time he was hoping I'd take another loan.

Lending £10 and getting back £42 isn't really worth the effort he put in for me. Coming to collect £1 every week would have been a ballache. However, if every 4th or 5th person borrows more and more money...

Years later when discussing it generally with colleagues in a school one of them told a story about her parents who ran a little shop with sub post office and often seen the same man with people collecting their benefits. Making sure he got his money right away.

I hear what your saying but trust me, there was one woman in my street that simply could not hold her water when it came to keeping her mouth shut and due to the fact there were times I was struggling for money then she would have put him onto me.

What would happen if you had have the funds to pay him back early, would he have accepted this? Imagine coming to you every week for a quid! I take it they set out the repayment plan?

That might be why there wasn't one in your particular street. Publicity and gossip is not what they need.

No, he wouldn't have accepted early repayment. The weekly visit was more about trying to persuade to take more money than the quid pick up. It's also a power thing as he never turned up at exactly the same time

God he sounded awful, he sounded like he needed folks to take his loan so that he could exert power over people.

What if a person worked a 12 hour shift on the day that payment was due, then would they come to your work? I imagine that they would want the name and address of a persons employer. What if you had popped out to the shop when LS came to get payment, would they just come back or do they seriously expect you to wait in all day?

Right now then I would say that I’m vulnerable financially so I would be perfect prey for LS, not that I would accept a loan from one but it’s definitely obvious to me why people take them at the time.

I will never understand people’s need to have power over people they don’t know, and why would you try to get someone to take a loan that they didn’t need just to control them, total bullies is all they are, did this person get bullied at school and this is them getting their own back on perfectly innocent folk?

Sorry I won’t ask any more questions, I am just very curious.

I expect that loan sharks that prey on vulnerable people that may not work , for lots of different reasons ,I live in a housing association hous e myself ( my town has no council houses a large housing association took them all over and I rent one of those that used to be council owned ) I don't know anybody like this on my estate I'm not saying there isn't any but maybe if there is one they don't feel we would be easy prey? I'm not a single parent for example ??

Feel free to ask any questions you want. It was a long time ago, and my life is good now. Better than I could ever have anticipated it being. I think it's important for people to know it's not just Channel 5 style benefit claimants that have these problems. I had a shitty childhood, but I had a job, I had a partner, we were comfortable and then it went to shit when he left and decided to be seriously nasty.

I think with the financial times coming up loan sharks will come back to the fore again for people.

I was lucky, I worked in a school that his children attended so he was highly unlikely to every approach me at work. You did have to hang about all evening for him. His favoured tactic was coming a night early. I imagine that seen a lot of people get into heavier debt with fines.

He tried to get people to take more loans for the same reason drug dealers encourage people to take more drugs and more expensive drugs - they get more money and power.

My appalling cousin is a loan shark for want of a better description. He runs an estate agency, I'm not 100% if he is just the manager or has some money in it too. He and his mates at other agencies undervalue "cheap" properties, i.e. 1 or 2 bed terrace homes. He then buys them personally and then rents them back out via his agency. He markets them to very young single mothers, very UC friendly. All looks good. Then he offers to furnish the property for them, but not as part of their rent, they can take a loan from him and he will buy the furniture/oven/even bedding and towels. They can't afford presents at Christmas? No problem, he'll loan them money for that too, there was worse things suggested but never proved. There is some degree of professionalism about him, he wears a suit and dishes out paperwork accordingly. He's a disgrace though and we all know it. Some of those women never got out of his debt and at least one suicide was attributed to his "home furnishing loan"

I am a single mother but my child doesn’t live with me and I am fairly new to the area and keep myself to myself so nobody would know if I was in dire need of a loan, which I really am in all honesty.

I do remember a friend getting door step loans from places like Provident and Shopacheck I'm not sure these were loan sharks though ?But I imagine the interest rate was sky high .

You'll be safe from being targetted @inappropriatefemale

It was my kid needing shoes (she trashed her shoes at school) plus the social worker my ex had basically set upon me (she was convinced I was going to go down the same road as my own parents) combining which helped me be seen as vulnerable.

@ConstanceSalinger The loan shark I mention is very much part of the community and outwardly seems helpful and professional at first as well. It's certainly a tactic they use to get access to vulnerable people

I bet there are LS that get women to pay them back by sleeping with other men, human trafficking basically.

I suppose if you can afford the repayments of an LS and the repayments aren’t too much then having someone offer to give you money for Xmas etc is far too appealing.

To the pp with the cousin that’s an LS, do you know if gets violent with his non paying clients or wouldn’t he tell you that? If the repayments are very low, like a few pounds a week, then there isn’t much chance if someone fucking up with their loans.

I have dealt with social workers and sometimes they aren’t the best at all, I have heard of so many stories about sw lying to make the parent sound that bit worse and I thought these folks were talking bullshit until I had to deal with them myself and then I seen that some of them do infact write absolute BS about you and there ain’t a thing you can do about it vbecause their word is basically the final word, they have too much power and more so than the police in some cases.

Obviously not all sw are bad and the majority are amazing at what they do, but some of them just love exerting their ‘superiority’ and they abuse it, they don’t seem to GAF about the problems they cause in families, mines was a first class bitch, thankfully now that my child is 18 then she is well out of our lives now, but I know if I were to have another kid then they would be all over me even though my issues were years ago!