The Economics Of Renting Versus Credit on TV's

[Richard_FM]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll have to look out for The Setmakers.

The TV "crunch" in the early 1960s seemed to stop a few manufacturers making sets, or else start badge engineering TVs from another company.

[peter_scott]

Probably not relevant re the general public but I bought my first colour set in the late 1970s, an ex-rental GEC 2040 from a pot-luck warehouse. Prior to that all my sets had been cast-offs and after the 2040 they all came out of skips until we bought a Panasonic flat screen 28" CRT set new. I never rented anything.

Peter

[Nuvistor]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

Thanks for the feedback, I'll have to look out for The Setmakers.

The TV "crunch" in the early 1960s seemed to stop a few manufacturers making sets, or else start badge engineering TVs from another company.

Information from PW Jan 1961.
The editorial makes the comment that TV installations were nearing saturation with nearly 11 million TV licences.

This together with G6Tanki comments about the PT being used for controlling the economy made movement of TV’s more difficult.
There was also the ongoing debate on the line standard and colour TV.

All these problems made buyers wary of buying something that would soon be obsolete, a rental set made sense for many but not for a single reason.

All this uncertainty made enormous problems for manufacturers. With many makes being bought out to allow the same chassis in different badged cabinets has you noted Richard.

[Richard_FM]

Looking at other threads here I've noticed that in the past the larger rental companies seemed to sell their old sets to the smaller companies or trade warehouses rather than to the general public.

[julie_m]

That's pretty understandable. The big rental companies were not set up to deal with sales of one set at a time to individuals and the inevitable bounces. Shifting them through the existing showroom network would have got in the way of the main rental business. It was easier for them to sell them in job lots, untested, to buyers who knew about TVs.

As far as the economics of renting versus buying go, just look at the amount people spend on razor blades over a lifetime, compared to the cost of permanent hair removal .....

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by julie_m

That's pretty understandable. The big rental companies were not set up to deal with sales of one set at a time to individuals and the inevitable bounces. Shifting them through the existing showroom network would have got in the way of the main rental business. It was easier for them to sell them in job lots, untested, to buyers who knew about TVs.

Another factor was the rental companies were paranoid about their engineers acquiring cheap sets, refurbing them and selling, or even renting them to the public as a little sideline.

As far as the economics of renting versus buying go, just look at the amount people spend on razor blades over a lifetime, compared to the cost of permanent hair removal .....

Not to mention the old practice of saving up to have all your teeth extracted.

[OscarFoxtrot]

Originally Posted by julie_m

As far as the economics of renting versus buying go, just look at the amount people spend on razor blades over a lifetime, compared to the cost of permanent hair removal .....

But you might change your mind after having you hair removed - growing a beard is also quite cheap.

[Station X]

One of the local rental companies had a shop in Ipswich where they sold ex rental sets to the public. I bought a 4:3 CRT Mitsubishi set from there and it gave good service for more than 10 years, which is more than can be said for my Beko which needed a new LOPT after about two years.

[Richard_FM]

Later one some of the rental companies started to sell reconditioned sets through their shops.

My Uncle bought 2-3 TVs for my Grandad ex-rental as he just wanted something decent & wasn't bothered about having a flash new set.

When I was looking for a new TV in 2001 I had a look at what the Granada shop in Stockport had to offer.

[Grubhead]

We were renting sets from Martin Dawes right up until LED TV's first came out.
They had a policy of renting brand new stuff for about two years, then you could upgrade to the latest model. It was much cheaper to rent than buy, plus if you did buy the TV and video you would be stuck with them till you could afford a new one or the broke down completely. During the 90's it worked well. But later on they began not to renew automatically, plus they started replacing with old models, saying you had to pay much more than for new stuff. In the end we gave up on them.
They also had a policy of offering the customer the old equipment at a much reduced price. Plus they had a main branch in Doncaster that had the returned items from rental, which had been checked, for sale at again very reasonable prices.

[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...

[emeritus]

In the late 1990's, following a suggestion by a work colleague, I bought a couple of ex-rental colour sets (one for me, one for an uncle) from the local Granada in Chelmsford. for about £60 each. They were Philips models, about 24" or 26" and gave several years of good service. One thing about these old CRT sets was that they were significantly slimmer that most later CRT sets. Ours was used on a triangular shelf I had built in the corner of our living room, and when it eventually failed I had great difficulty in finding a set of the same screen size that would fit the shelf. I ended up making a paper template of the shelf and trying various sets on it, and the only one that fitted was a Ferguson (Thomson) that still works but is now relegated to the loft.

[Peter.N.]

I used to buy the same make and model from the Granada outlets, made for much simpler servicing. The colour sets I started with were the 2028 and 2040 but the next series using the PIL tube used easily replaceable panels (except the line timebase) and I would carry a box of these in the car and was rarely in the house for more than 15 minutes, plus the cup of tea of course.

When the sets got very cheap I would buy scrap ones for the panels, by the time they finished I had almost forgotten how to repair them.

Peter

[Welsh Anorak]

A working Thomson? That's a rarity in your loft! (post #32)
Regarding sets' availability, Studio 263 is right up to a point. It's analogous to the classic car market - millions of Cortinas and G8s were sold in the Seventies, but finding a good MGB or B&O is simpler.
Ex-rentals flooded the market - just look at the classifieds in 'Television' from the early Eighties. Then the rental companies gradually saw the light - Mrs Jones would cease her rental, the set was sold to a disposal warehouse, and for a couple of months' rental she could buy a similar set, reconditioned and guaranteed. Exit, one loyal customer.
I know Radio Rentals latterly used to crush their sets rather than let them onto the 'off the pile' market. Granada stock was generally so clapped out that it didn't really matter!
Renting used to be mainly for the less well-heeled. That's changed, as I said in a earlier post, as it's now for people who value service over cost.
For the poorer families it's not sets that are rented, now, it's money. Look at the business done by Brighthouse. Massive TVs, massive interest rates, small deposits. To the customer it's the same as renting - you pay a fixed amount every week that you can budget for. When the set fails out of warranty you get another one, fixed weekly outgoing. APR doesn't matter here - it's the predictability that's the thing. I'm not entering into the rights and wrongs - it fulfils a need.

[peterpixel]

Re post #31 and Sony screen sizes.I have a memory of a Board of Trade ban on the import of Japanese sets over a certain screen size in order to protect local industry.This was in the early 1960's.Peter.

[Welsh Anorak]

I thought it was later than that, but it certainly was still applicable in the early Seventies. I think 19" was the maximum allowed, so there were many Sony 18" and Hitachi 19" Japanese sets around. As far as I know this ban only affected Japanese sets - there was a plethora of large screen European TVs around in the Seventies colour boom.

[FERNSEH]

Surely the main reason why so many people rented TVs was the surety of service? Way back in the sixties when I started in the trade so many customers had serious problems getting their sets fixed properly, I sorted out loads of "butchered" sets which had been in the hands of so-called engineers. The answer to achieve worry free viewing for a lot of people was to rent the set and let rental company look after all the servicing problems.

And look it at another way, the weekly TV rental payments were less than the installments of a hire purchase agreement. Also, when the years guarantee was up the hire purchase payments continued and repairs and service would have to be paid.
TV rental made sense.

DFWB.

[Nuvistor]

I think in the 1970’s the main set makers for PAL were European and Japanese, I don’t think there were others, or if there were it was small. RCA had the tie up with Thorn but I don’t think RCA imported complete sets.

Late 60’s, early 70’s the PAL patent licence was only granted to set makers were the transmission system was PAL, hence Sony producing various work arounds to import sets into the U.K. By the middle of the 70’s companies such as Hitachi and Toshiba were importing full PAL-D sets but with a max screen size of 19 inch.

I don’t know if this was a PAL licensing issue, a government rule, a simple logistics rule easier shipping or that most sets in Japan were small screen.

Any one have further information?

[Nuvistor]

There is no doubt that repair costs were involved with any decision to rent as well as financial reasons.
My boss would normally only take in for repairs what we sold so I rarely saw bodged sets, but as David stated there were quite a few bodgers around. Most of the local trade I knew. and went Tech with to obtain the C&G exams, course 48, long since de listed. So the area was good for trained people but there was the odd one around that could make you shudder.

[GMB]

My parents bought their first TV (Bush) for the coronation on hire-purchase, which was not something they did for anything else, and it was almost the only appliance they had.

I was too small to remember what its reliability was like, but I suspect there may have been some dodgy practice by the local repair man, because after that they rented from Radio Rentals.

I have to say that in the days of dual standard and then dual standard + colour I think the rental deal was probably worth it because the service engineer was an almost constant presence (I learned a lot by "helping"), and by the time colour was around I was maintaining the old Bush - and found that contrary to what my parents had been told, it was absolutely fine after the odd minor adjustment. The feature they seemed to get on their rental deal was constant upgrades - mainly for the benefit of the service department I suspect.

After the demise of 405 they switched to buying second-hand sets for a few quid and dumped them when they broke.