BUYING BY INSTALMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 33, 8 August 1934, Page 8

BUYING BY INSTALMENTS

The instalment purchase system is widespread. In various forms it applies to many kinds of commodities and property, from clothing to dwellings. Fdr some people and in some forms it is productive of great benefit. The person who can pay half-a-crown a week but never save it unaided can, by the instalment method, acquire many useful tilings, even (by insurance) a nest-egg for old age or sickness. But the system also has its drawbacks. Sortie people are tempted to buy more than they can afford and to commit, themselves so heavily that they lose everything. The State lias found it necessary to intervene in some forms of ihstal-" ment buying, to protect the,buyer. The Hire-Purchase Agreements Bill, introduced by Mr. W. Nash in the House of Representatives yesterday, proposes a further intervention to protect people who have bought goods under the hire-purchase system and who have been unable because of unfortunate circumstances to maintain their instalments. There are sound arguments in favour of a measure of protection; but' we also see difficulties. If, as we assume, it is intended to apply to existing agreements it would be unfaif to many sellers who have made sales in the belief that they could recover gopds on which instalments were not paid without litigation and before the goods had become unsaleable. To be sure there is in the'mortgage protection legislation a precedent for variation of contracts, but the precedent is not a good ones One proposal in the Bill is wholly I commendable, that the conditions of hire-purchase should be set out in plain, straightforward language. Yet even so it would be necessary to have the conditions framed by a legal draftsman, for the plain language of I the layman sometimes leads to more disputes than arise over what Mr. Winston Churchill termed the "cs'tablished jargon and rigmarole of an honourable profession." If, ' however, conditions were set out simply one or two simple safeguards would probably suffice for protection against the occasional unscrupulous dealer. To hedge hire-purchase around with exacting conditions would mean that the seller would be chary of using it. This Avould operate to the disadvantage of both, the honest buyer and the reasonable seller. If such a check is deemed desirable the right time to apply it would be when people were in the full flush of optimistic buying. Very few are buying now without considering carefully what prospects they have "of paying.