Have you ever used one? Are they necessarily as ‘shady’ as they look?

I pass one on the way home sometimes (depending on the route I take), and can’t help feeling sad when I look in the window. And yet they do have some nice stuff.

I wouldn’t buy from them out of principle.

I once took a guitar in to cash converters to see how much they’d give me for it. out of curousity. I got offered £25 for a £350 bass guitar.

Scum essentially, preying on the poor.

Scum essentially, preying on the poor and burglary victims

FTFY

Items are only worth what they can get for them. The Cash converters and Cash generators tend to check the web ebay and the likes for the prices then deduct there fees, then estimate what they can sell the item for and offer half of what ever is left.

I use both if i am short of cash. I always do buy back and only ask for enough cash to get me by, some folks take out the max and can’t afford to buy the items back and some folks just sell on.

Just becuse a item is purchased for £100 does not mean it is worth that. The shop has to flog the item and make a profit.

Many years ago the then GF spotted a nice Cannondale MTB outside one, we bought it and she got many years good use out of it. They did say they checked all bikes with the Police before selling….

[url=https://flic.kr/p/Vq8S]Lou biking[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

I saw a “Fender” 5 string bass in our local Cash Converters recently. It had the Fender logo on the headstock, so it must be a Fender, right?

Nah, it was an Ibanez.

I used a couple in Oz when I was back-packing, I had a decentish Omega watch that saw the inside of a couple of places when drank all my rent/food money away ha ha. It was quiet pleasant, you’d have a chat, they’d have a look over it to make sure it was legit and I’d borrow a few hundred dollars and paid 15% interest per month.

I’ve not been tempted by Cash Converters or the like, I wandered into one once looking to buy a cheap games console. It seemed like a semi-legal version of an old school ‘fence’ and a loan shark in one easy to find place. They were offering very little for the consoles and asking a lot for them, yet people were queuing up to hand over their stuff.

Thankfully now we’re somewhere between “emerging service class” and “established middle-class” as per that other thread should we have a rainy day we’ve got £20k worth of low interest ready credit available to completely screw our lives up if we wanted to via a credit card.

My first job was as Pawnbroker.

Mays, who had branches at Collyhurst, Salford Precinct, Oldham and The Royal Exchange in Manchester.

Most prolific customers were local women trying to feed their families.
😐

Lots of big money transactions from the first generation Asian and Irish Traveller communities, who tended to distrust banks and preferred to invest in amazing quantities of very pure gold.

The company I worked for were very honest when it came to valuation, and charged much lower interest than many other lenders.

I got out because it just depressed me after a while and the moral and ethical implications bothered me.

The products for sale usually seem wildly overpriced but presumably they’re selling some of that stuff to someone.