The Economics Of Renting Versus Credit on TV's

[Al (astral highway)]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

I was wondering if anyone had made an in depth study of the economics of renting a television against paying on credit.

That of course would depend on when the credit agreement was taken out.

(My parents always bought ex-rental TVs, so I gew up with sets that needed to be bashed to get a picture, or later, had bizarre colours instead of RGB!)

I don't know when renting TVs stopped being possible, but bank interest rates under Margaret Thatcher hit 15% or more if I recall correctly, so HP would have been extremely expensive for a period in the 80's.

[Nuvistor]

Interest rates would affect rental prices, money was usually borrowed to buy the sets to rent.
No doubt the big rental companies owned by Thorn got very preferential rates for the set.

We had a small RBM dealership, RBM provided financing for sets to be rented.

[ms660]

Originally Posted by Grubhead

We were renting sets from Martin Dawes

I used to work for his Dad, Fred.

Lawrence.

[Nuvistor]

Fred Dawes, a Manchester company.

[FERNSEH]

"We had a small RBM dealership, RBM provided financing for sets to be rented."

Hi Frank, it was Rank Credit Facilities. It wasn't cheap borrowing but if the dealer wanted to rent out colour TVs there was no other choice. Banks weren't very cooperative when came to lending money to finance our TV rentals.
Rank Credit Facilities (RCF) were happy to offer finance for other makes of TVs.
Anyway, despite the cost of borrowing from RCF, it did help me to expand my TV rental base so perhaps on hindsight I shouldn't grumble.

DFWB.

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by Studio263

Looking at this another way, is there a particular set you want but can't find?

Most Japanese sets were mid-sized, Sonys were 18" for years, Hitachi did 19" sets, Matsushita (Panasonic / National) and Toshiba did a lot in the 16" to 18" range. Because Japanese sets were reliable they tended not to stack up in the back rooms of TV shops, instead they worked for 20 - 30 years and then were quietly disposed of, often for reasons of unfashionable styling (a typical Japanese weakness). By comparison, the British alternatives (Pye 713, 18" Decca 30, BRC 8000 series, RBM Z718) were really not strong on reliability and ended up cluttering up workshops and storerooms of TV dealers when they were still quite new. This is from were many older "collectable" sets have been emerging from. The Z718 was at least a fine performer though, unlike the others in that group.

Medium sized sets I fell over this morning: Sony KV-1800UB, Hitachi CAP-160R, B&O 3500. Must tidy up...

Talking of style the Japanese sets in the 1970s looked quite American, especially ones made by Sony. I had a Sony KV-1800UB which came from a friends parents garage clearout. I had to get rid of it as I was offered a 21" Pye with RC & teletext by some relatives. At least I managed to sell it for a token amount to a lorry driver who wasn't bothered about how basic it was.

The Decca CP711 was an odd mid sized set, possibly aimed at people switching to colour. Stylewise it seemed still in the mid 1970s when the rest of the larger Decca range had the grey plasic & woodgrain look Thorn & GEC among others were using at the time.

[Nuvistor]

The very first Hitachi and Toshiba CTV looked very different to European sets but soon changed with the second versions from about 1974 onwards. Just shows how agile those companies were to recognise and change the cabinets.

[Grubhead]

The TV advertisement for Granada still sticks in my mind.
"It's great service you get renting your TV from Granada. That's why millions agree rent Granada".
I did read somewhere that during the 70's the TV manufactures couldn't supply enough TV's to meet demand.
Mind you TV's were not as reliable as they are now. So renting was the only way to keep the kids happy. If it broke down during the kids show parents had hell to pay! Plus you could have them on the slot meter!
Being that a TV might last a good few years there's no point paying for the need of a service call.
The rental market has now moved on to music. It's called streaming, with Spotify leading the pack. Since you don't buy the music, you pay to have piped to you. That's renting to me!

[Graham G3ZVT]

The TV advertisement for Granada still sticks in my mind.
"It's great service you get renting your TV from Granada.

The later adverts used live actors, but an earlier campaign had animated characters. The animated engineers were casually dressed in polo-neck tops while in reality it was a breach of dress code to not wear a collar & tie.
There ensued an interesting discussion between we EEPTU members and the Management about this anomaly, apparently these cartoon characters were not to be regarded as analogous to the customers expectation of real engineers at all.

[Nuvistor]

Streaming music and video is renting it, just like the Video tape rental but without a physical item to deal with. To me for music it seems pointless with all the internet radio stations available.

Slot meters, only saw those in the last couple of years in the trade, some slot meter users had some peculiar ideas on saving money. The boss usually went collecting, using the surplus in the meter to try and sell another item, it very often worked.

Quite a few times he would call at homes and see the TV on but no one home, when asked why the reply was they were saving up, the longer it was on the more money back at the end of the month.

The boss not a happy chap thinking of the wear on the TV especially the CRT. Customer oblivious to the cost of a large screen early CTV on the electric bill.

[Peter.N.]

Reliability and the cost of repairs were the main rental drivers in the '50s - 70s as the average valve set would develop a fault about every 6 months so if you were selling them once the guarantee had expired you would have a useful income from the repairs.

When most of the valve sets had been replaced by transistor sets it virtually killed off the repair trade, certainly if it was your sole source of income but sets were still reasonably expensive so that sustained the rental trade for a bit longer but by the late '90s the price had fallen to the point that the rental trade was declining dramatically, that was when we diversified into B&B which kept us going for a good few years.

Peter

[Nuvistor]

We used to use a rule of thumb of a repair to BW sets in the 60/70’s of 1 every 9 to 12 months, and the 70’s U.K. colour sets about the same. The middle 70’s Japanese sets we sold maybe once or possibly twice in 5 years if you were unlucky. The later Japanese sets at the end of the 70’s were similar to UK ones.

All on very small numbers from a small retailer so probably not reflecting of the rest of the trade.

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

The later adverts used live actors, but an earlier campaign had animated characters. The animated engineers were casually dressed in polo-neck tops while in reality it was a breach of dress code to not wear a collar & tie.
There ensued an interesting discussion between we EEPTU members and the Management about this anomaly, apparently these cartoon characters were not to be regarded as analogous to the customers expectation of real engineers at all.

The one time I remember a Granada engineer coming to my parents house he had a red overcoat which I guess was part of the dress code. With longish hair, beard & glasses he resembled a young Jim Royle.

It was common to rent VCRs in the 1980s due to the cost & potential for repairs. One of my friends had a rented piano key Panasonic model with a cabled remote. After a year or 2 it was replaced by a new one which developed a fault & was quickly replaced by another.

Some of the rental companies started to offer satellite TV at the turn of the 1990s, but by the time DVD players & digital TV came along people seemed more willing to buy outright, especially as purchase costs weren't so great.

I remember one company had a last push by offering an On Digital box to rent with subscriptions for so many years followed by a discount on an integrated set.

[raditechman]

Rental of TV's became more common when ITV started and later BBC 2.
I remember our first television was a Pye 9" VO9 which was purchased on easy terms not long after the coronation.
This was about 49 Gns I think. It worked OK and when ITV started a purchased set top box converter was used.
When the set became uneconomic to repair along came our next set a 14" Bush console, however this was rented. That stayed until another 19" Bush replaced it also rented.
My parents would probably have stayed renting but I was getting into TV repairing so they bought that set and ended the rental contract. When BBC2 came along I fitted the Bush conversion kit (UHF tuner, IF board new line hold, dropper sections etc).
They never went back to renting even when colour started as I was always able to fix any problems. (and supply a colour set!)
So I reckon early TV days people bought sets. When new stations and other technical changes started coming they went over to rental to keep up to date, when colour came most people could not afford the cost of purchase so rental became the norm, and as the early set were prone to breakdown it was the best idea.
Later sets became cheaper and more reliable so renting lost favour.
I know people on here like cats and I found a photo of that Bush console TV taken in the late 1950's with "Fluffy" the cat in front of it!

John

[unitaudio]

My parents first television was a Bush console the same as that.

Regards,
Paul

[Grubhead]

Was there some reason why Granada put their own logo on TV and video recorders that were clearly made by other companies? It would have been more expensive to do than just leaving the makers own logo on. Where they forced to do it?

[Nuvistor]

Granada were a big company, buying in bulk, a badge would have to be fitted, the factory could easily fit whatever the buyer wanted with the number of items being purchased. Cost of a different badge I don’t think would have been a consideration.

Badge engineering has been around a long time.

[Nuvistor]

Taken from PT June 1966.

[FERNSEH]

Nuvistor wrote: "Granada were a big company, buying in bulk, a badge would have to be fitted, the factory could easily fit whatever the buyer wanted with the number of items being purchased. Cost of a different badge I don’t think would have been a consideration.
Badge engineering has been around a long time."

On the subject of badge engineering in 1973 Rank-Bush-Murphy were making certain TVs under the Rank-Arena brand, for sale in Comet stores.
I was told by the representatives that this was a cheaper to make version of the Bush and Murphy branded models which of course was nonsense.

A TV engineer I knew in the seventies did a bit of commercial espionage. He learnt that a private discount store in Newcastle was buying in the Philips G8 model 550 for 150pounds. The wholesaler price for that model was 180 pounds.
Ex VAT prices.

DFWB.

[Nuvistor]

Originally Posted by FERNSEH

A TV engineer I knew in the seventies did a bit of commercial espionage. He learnt that a private discount store in Newcastle was buying in the Philips G8 model 550 for 150pounds. The wholesaler price for that model was 180 pounds.
Ex VAT prices.

DFWB.

I presume David you knew this engineer very very well.