Car payments are ruining our lives - BBC

mjt said:
My £20k bank loan is on £300 repayments and that's probably about the same amount of my net income as well. F doing anything like that on anything other than a (relatively) well-paid, stable job. Idiots.
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She wouldn't have got a bank loan though.... I can see the point in that the car finance companies bypass a certain amount of common sense and affordability After all why should they care they get their money either way. They have zero interest in your own financial state. So i can understand a point of view, the car companies need to apply the same level of checks as a bank.

But it does not detract from the fact she has no common sense, no basic math skills and in general not fit to go to university. Its embarrassing beyond belief get a push bike for £100 off gumtree.
 
Credit is not a problem and can be very useful in many circumstances, the problem is how it is defined, sold and regulated. There are plenty of people who for a variety of reasons need protecting from being exploited and they are not all irresponsible e.g. the elderly, people with limited literacy / numeracy skills etc.

Just preaching to the converted helps no one.
 
[TW]Fox said:
What do you think a phone contract is?
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Contract phones back in the day were not bad. You spent £600 on a 24 month contract for flagship phone and after that you got to keep the phone. Now it is a real rip off and I just tend to buy outright and cheap contract on top. Even then though I would normally put £150 down to cheapen the monthly payments.
 
adam cool dude said:
Contract phones back in the day were not bad. You spent £600 on a 24 month contract for flagship phone and after that you got to keep the phone. Now it is a real rip off and I just tend to buy outright and cheap contract on top. Even then though I would normally put £150 down to cheapen the monthly payments.
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Not really, it's all driven by the RRP of the phone, the RRP's have gone up so the prices have gone up. Generally speaking it has always been the case that contacts have been more expensive. Your complaining about putting £150 down and suggesting the solution is to put £700-£1000 down instead. It's not surprising the latter as the potential to get a lower overall price as nothing is being financed at all.

The flip side is that you can pick up the latest flagships on launch for the around the total cost + service for less than the equivalent sim only deal and buying the phone outright. Sourcing the contract from a 3rd party seller like mobiles.co.uk can be cheaper than buying outright. People are just don't shop around, go directly to the network and pay 15-20% more than they need to.

The exactly the same issues applies to car finance, loads of people use dealer finance on used cars when in reality they could get a far cheaper finance product from a regular bank to buy the car outright. People also don't consider the balloon payment at the end of PCP's when factoring in their 'monthly payments' so they think 'buying' (renting) new is cheaper than buying used. People also don't think to use the dealer finance to take advantage of any additional 'discounts', cancelling it within 14 days and using a cheaper 3rd party product to replace it. Some people are happy to pay more for the convenience, the reality is most don't even check that the product they are being sold is priced competitively.

People generally just don't sense check what they are actually doing or apply any kind of critical thinking to expensive purchases, they just see shiny new toy for X per month. Who's fault is that, the person buying or the person selling? Unless the person is genuinely vulnerable then they shouldn't need to be protected from expensive finance deals, saying no is a perfectly valid option.
 
adam cool dude said:
Contract phones back in the day were not bad. You spent £600 on a 24 month contract for flagship phone and after that you got to keep the phone. Now it is a real rip off and I just tend to buy outright and cheap contract on top. Even then though I would normally put £150 down to cheapen the monthly payments.
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That makes me fee old. Back in the day you spend £300 on a 12 month contract and got a top of the range phone... The days when the total contract cost less than buying the phone off sim free.
 
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