We still have it in Australia (called layby). I know some people who use it to buy larger Xmas or birthday presents way ahead of time and pay it off over many months.
Here are the rules and costs for Kmart for example: www.kmart.com.au/layby/
Comment on I got that dept in me
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Stores had layaway back in them days, it was OK.
veroxii@aussie.zone 10 months ago
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I remember layaway fairly well. The great thing was that there was a small fee at worst, no interest charged.
It really needs to come back. It’s far better than putting someone in interest laden debt. But debt is profitable.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 10 months ago
People will never go back to not getting the thing up front plus then the store has to warehouse all of that stuff she the costs associated with staff looking after and organizing it, in a time when every place is slashing staff this will never do
ch00f@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Wasn’t the whole point of layaway to keep the physical item from being purchased by another customer until you could pay it off? How many items today completely sell out?
Elder millennial, and I’ve never fully understood layaway.
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 10 months ago
I’m Gen Z, I did a layaway on the 2 bikes (my ebikes and my Kona Dew+) I’ve bought because I knew I would have enough money to fully pay for them soon, but I didn’t want to risk those particular models selling out.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah, but that was back in the day when if you wanted some things they could take weeks or more than a month to have it ordered and shipped to you. It was all snail mail and next day prime delivery didn’t exist for the average person. So if you paid layaway for a month you could get the double benefit of payments and not needing to wait for an order to come in. IOW you could save up for a month and then order and get your item a month after that, or “claim” an item now and make the payments.
ch00f@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Makes a lot of sense, thanks.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
But with layaway, you didn’t actually get the product until you fully paid it off right? Which I don’t think you can do with something perishable?
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yes, layaway was typically used for bigger purchases. It wasn’t Klarna for a slice of pizza.
SouthEndSunset@lemm.ee 10 months ago
But now we do have Klarna, for a slice of pizza. In the U.K., at any rate. It’s terrifying.
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Agreed. I remember it being eminently reasonable. I bought a Wii and a laptop using layaway 15 years ago.
Now, we get Klarna, which will fuck you up if you can’t make those payments in four weeks.