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.

Okay it cost £100 more than it should, but without Bright House shed have been screwed.

@MonkeyToesOfDoom

I don't understand your logic here. How is costing her £100 more, a good example of her not being screwed? It would have cost her a lot more than that if you understand anything about economics.

I have had my skint times, I've been bankrupt twice and had my mortgage rate double overnight in the early 90s. What we did was go out and get jobs and today, as a grandmother, with a daughter who's a lone parent with four children....

Washing machine insurance is a way forward. They can be repaired. My DD has had her washing machine repaired four times through insurance. Much better than going to one of these companies.

A tenner a wash?

I note the points raised that some people cannot move back in with parents because those parents are dead. Fair point.

Perhaps if I didn't have that safety net I'd feel differently about the ethics of working for someone like Brighthouse. Or perhaps I wouldn't: there's no point in me keeping my house if my job is so exploitative of me or others that I am suicidal from it. I have both depression and strong opinions about ethics, and when I am compelled to do something that I believe to be wrong, it severely aggravates my depression.

Some of the judgements on here about the Brighthouse employees and their customers absolutely reek of middle class privilege. Clearly none of you have ever struggled to pay your bills or put food on the table.

There are always exceptions that prove the rule, but in the main, extended warranties on electrical goods don't make good financial sense.

www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/extended-warranties-are-they-worth-it

My washing machine and cooker cost £8 a week. Yes, I was paying that £8 forever and a day, but you can't use a launderette and save when that's your budget. I don't even know where the nearest launderette is.

You certainly can't afford washing machine insurance if you can only afford £4 a week toward paying for one. And how do you get insurance for a £30 Facebook second hand machine?

I spent a year without a washing machine when my children were little. It cost around £10-20 per trip to the laundrette. Bloody nightmare. My dad bought me a washing machine for Christmas in the end.

A tenner a wash?

I couldn't see the prices of the machines on line for our local one, but a service wash costs £12-£18 so a tenner is a guesstimate.

If people want to do something to help folks forced to use the likes of Brighthouse then campaign against benefit cuts or the loss of budgeting loans.

Very few people in the world decide the actively want to buy their essentials from the likes of Brighthouse. Give people choices and then life gets better.

Removing choices just puts people in even more difficult positions. Where do people like I was then go now? Payday loans aren't really an option now. Loansharks - they're still around. Not any cheaper than Brighthouse.

When I was a child in the 1950s a lot of my mother's friends lived on what was known as tick. She would never use it, because she said it was a rope around your neck.We did without a lot of what I now know where material things but we always had food on the table.There were only two cars ever seen in our street, one was the doctor's and the other was the debt collector's who was known as the ticket man or the Provy man.An old lady living in the street was the agent, people would take the money they owed to her house, and she would safeguard it until the provy man called to collect from her.His car was parked outside her house on payment day.This was because people were ashamed they were in debt, and by doing it that way they avoided the car being seen outside their house.
I tried to live by my mother's advice of always having food for your family even if you have not much else, but have taken out bank loans unknown to her of course!

Waxon I have read the story and it is flawed. My point is that it is flawed and thus gives an inaccurate picture of poverty. I'm only talking about the story. Not the real experience of poverty.

I too was brought up in real poverty (I'm stunned when I look back).

My DH talks about his childhood and I can't believe how different it was to mine!

Things were a bit different in the 1950s

I’m usually all for save up for what you can afford and do without what you can’t, but sometimes doing without costs a fortune.

I don't understand your logic here. How is costing her £100 more, a good example of her not being screwed?

Forgive my lack of economic expertise but basically.

Washer RRP £200
Washer on weekly pay credit £320
£6.15 a week over 52 weeks

Vs

Launderette £10 per trip, 2 trips per week.
£20 x 52 = £1050

I think that's right.. I think in economics £1050 is less than £320.. I believe anyway.
I'm not an expert at economics tho.

tenner a wash?

If you're paying to use the dryers, yes.

middle class bubble

I grew up without central heating and mum rationed the electric heaters to keep the leccy bill down, but do carry on.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/housekeeping/1532614-How-much-do-launderettes-cost-these-days-Washing-machine-on-the-blink

It’s getting there too.

Christmas Eve 2002 my car broke down and I didn’t get it back until well into January. Wrangling a six year old, a four year old and a pile of dirty washing onto one of the infrequent buses was not fun. Merry Christmas.

Factor in the cost of getting to a laundrette too if we are being financially accurate. Bus ride for us to the nearest one. That’s £10 in bus fares for a single parent and child who can’t be left home alone. What if we have medical needs that require multiple trips and loads a week?

I’d rather pay the OTT brighthouse costs.

I haven't read the story, but I lived in that scenario most of my childhood

I've read the story many times, discussed it with the author and watched the author discuss the concept with groups of fans.

You are spot on in your interpretation.

We did without a lot of what I now know where material things but we always had food on the table

Sometimes we had neither. But it's not a competition :)

Food was always prioritised but that sometimes meant no bus fares for my dad to get to work, he mostly did night shifts in factories. My mum also worked and sewed or knitted most of our clothes. There were no benefits really and times were hard. We mostly had handed down shoes etc. Don't get me wrong, we were very happy and my parents worked hard, but we were still sometimes hungry, often cold and had little in the way of material goods.

I can still remember my mum budgeting with cash on a weekly basis and allocating out bits towards rent, electricity, coal, food etc and funnily enough the whole family are good budget-ers and we've all done well for ourselves but it's a crap situation to be in and it's crap that 40-50 years since i was a child, families are still in a similar boat.

I work for a charity and am aware of poverty with special relevance to women and girls. I was once talking to major donors about BrightHouse and being quite disparaging about it.

My major donor quite firmly explained that for some people it was the only option. We talked about it at length.

For the very privileged major donor to understand this was a bit of a revelation.

For some families BrightHouse is the only option and rather than do away with the shop we should do away with the systems that make that shop possible.

Indeed scifi

My local Lau drette costs vary for load size.
£4.50 for a family 7kg wash only.
£1.50 for 60min dry.
£9.50 for a double non feather duvet.
It's a fab launderette tbh bit it also costs £6.50 return to get there on the bus.
Using it for a year would cost a fair bit and I only have the one kid.

Here's just hoping the likes of social workers take things like "wash your clothes in the bath and use a kettle to make pot noodles" as being acceptable when people who are properly on their arses have them breathing down their neck.

@lyralalala

You make excellent points here. Social work profession doesn't understand how poverty gets under one's skin. How it bleeds through every pore.

I understand why people are drawn to Brighthouse models of credit. How they'd be willing to sell their soul to get a washing machine, a laptop, a smart phone.

The point is, that is exactly how these models get away with such brutal actions. Tell a mother that her children will be taken because of 'concerns' about her children, no uniform, no underwear. Threat of child protection proceedings?

I get it. I so get it.

I come from a home where we told the welfare to fuck off when they knocked on the door. We had a twin tub on the strap from the local rag and bone man.

The models we see today such as Brighthouse, and other sub prime lenders, feed into such worries.

Clearly none of you have ever struggled to pay your bills or put food on the table.

I have, and I still have ethics about what work I'll do. There's no point doing a job that makes me suicidal, I've made that mistake before and it doesn't end well.

Washer RRP £200
Washer on weekly pay credit £320
£6.15 a week over 52 weeks

But that's not what Brighthouse have been screencapped as offering upthread by Jobseeker19, is it? They are charging nearly double the price, not 1.5x the price, but nearly double the price, on a ridiculously overspecced appliance. Who needs wifi on a dryer?

For some families BrightHouse is the only option and rather than do away with the shop we should do away with the systems that make that shop possible.

Yep, that's what i was trying to say. we need ways that people in poverty are able to build some resilience so that they are not left with a shit last resort. Or maybe now no resort.

Maybe government could have looked at doing some work with their business model to make it fairer for those who needed whilst still allowing enough profit to enable the company to be run.

Financial issues generally affect women more as they are generally the ones left holding the babies.