Shopping At BrightHouse

            When you are approached by a sales person in BrightHouse they're not after selling you a product, like a large screen LCD telly, they're after selling you a service, i.e. the means to allow you to buy a large screen LCD telly when you might be a person who is unable to obtain credit or afford to pay cash in a single payment.

            Go in to a BrightHouse and try and buy a telly cash. First thing you'll notice is how so much more expensive they are than they are in other retail stores like Currys or Comet. Have you been able to find the cash price on the price ticket yourself without any help? The cash price is there, but it's hard to find and the whole price ticket itself is very hard to follow. Have you found a telly that's actually a bargain? Great, grab a sales person and try and buy one outright. If it is a great deal it is only there for show, maybe it's being advertised as being half priced but believe me the salespeople only have that one on display to attract you in. They'll now say you can't buy one at that price because it's out of stock for a couple of weeks and they don't sell the display models. This doesn't just go for televisions by the way but everything, I'm thinking in particular of retro fridges.

            You should have been approached by a sales person by now, someone should said hello to you within seconds of you walking in the door and a sales person should be hounding you within sixty seconds of you being in the store. They can get into big trouble if they don't. Do you think they're just having a general conversation with you about the weather? No, they're not. The sales training tries to train the sales people how to sell to you without you noticing you're being sold to.

            As I've mentioned they're not looking for cash sales but need to sell you a "buy to rent" scheme that includes "Optional Service Cover." The sales people will only use prices that include "Optional Service Cover" and are quite often at a loss for what to say if the customers keep using the price from the ticket that doesn't include "Optional Service Cover." Although strangely enough the price doesn't include "Damage Liability Cover" and try and get an agreement done that doesn't include "D.L.C." Don't believe me? Check around and find out. Do all these customers know they got this "D.L.C."? How come so many customers have it? Good sales skills from the sales people or misleading price tickets, misleading Hire Purchase agreements and misleading Hire Purchase agreement presentations?

            Hire Purchase agreement presentation? What's that? O.K. so you've picked a product and are going to rent to buy it, the sales person will produce an agreement and sit down and go through it with you. Notice that the first agreement will absolutely include both "O.S.C." and "D.L.C." and they'll describe the benefits of keeping these services and the disadvantages of cancelling them. That is if you're lucky, if you seem not to care or not to be paying attention they'll skip the explanations and you'll be signing the agreement with both services included. The sales people are informally trained to gloss over or skip over these extra charges, formally they're told to do a full in depth explanation of the agreement presentation but when they are actually in a real store their manager or trainer, called "person of potential", will get them to skip and gloss over these bits.

            The cost of "O.S.C." and "D.LC." can be only a pound or so a week each. When the customer sees the low weekly cost in black and white in their contract and hears all the benefits the general reaction is to keep these services. Now think how much this weekly charge adds up to if you pay every week for three years! It's all about how it's sold, if "O.S.C." or "D.L.C." are good services worth paying for is open to debate but the sales pitch isn't designed to be even handed and uses a load of tricks to get you to sign up for them as quickly and as easily as possible.

            The A.P.R. in the store is 29.9% and the sales people have to describe as competitive, and I do mean have to. In the U.K. right now the average A.P.R. would be around 16 or 17%. So you have to ask competitive with who exactly?

            Sales people are only allowed to use the word optional twice when speaking to each customer.

            And finally, for this time, no deposit? Then why do customers have to be paid up to the next Saturday as soon as their agreement is signed? And that's the next Saturday not the coming Saturday, go in on the wrong day and that's a twelve day payment. Oh, don't forget you've just signed your agreement, they've still got to do your paperwork, check your references and arrange delivery. It could be a few weeks before you get delivery. What happens seven days after you've signed your agreement? Phone calls from an account rep telling you to make your weekly payment, that's what. You've got to keep your payments up to date even though you haven't got delivery of anything yet.

            Don't believe some this above? More fool you.