Got woken up this morning by a phone call from the builders.
As a background as its a new house we get everything newly installed obviously, but much of it is basic as standard. So we get a new white oven and hob, we'd prefer a stainless steel one. Had the option of going for the stainless steel one as an "upgrade" but the upgrade cost was £600. Which would need paying up-front rather than being part of the mortgage, given we already have enough to be buying new we decided to stick with the default oven and upgrade later (a new one costs £600 from the shops too). We were going to pay for the upgrade and had told our contact in the builders a while ago, but then at the last minute when we had to commit (and pay) decided not to.
This morning's call from our contact in the builders started with her asking to confirm that we had 'ordered' the white oven and hob? Then she said that they had the wrong oven and hob delivered to them for us, they'd accidentally had the stainless steel one delivered to them instead. So would we mind a free upgrade? £600 upgrade given to us for free today because they've ordered what we wanted rather than what we could afford
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Went into town later and we bought our sofa suite. There's so much to get right now, kitting out an entire house in one go is not going to be easy. They said it'd take 6 weeks for them to make and deliver the sofa suite anyway so since we move in 3 weeks no reason not to order it now. Is really funky. Bought it from a national brand, DFS, that is always advertising on TV & radio. I've always laughed at the brand, mainly because their adverts are so OTT, but we've been 'shopping around' for months now. Saw this particular suite 3 months ago and we loved it, not seen another to top it since. Today went to a retail park that had 5 furniture brands in it, finishing in DFS last we saw the sofa we liked last time again and coincidentally the same salesperson who was quite warm and chatted with us a few months ago remembered us. We got our sofa suite ordered, she's got her commission .
I've never bought anything on credit before, besides credit cards which I pay off in full, I hate the idea of paying interest. But with so many big purchases (we own no furniture basically) this is the first of two to be bought hopefully on interest free credit. Start paying in 12 months time, then repay it over 3 years, interest free. The bedroom furniture set should be the other really big bill and most companies seem to be offering interest-free credit on them too. Another advantage of the recession it seems