Comet are offering incentives of up to £200 to swap their old white goods for new ones under a scheme designed to mirror the government’s car scrappage scheme, widely reported as being a “cash for clunkers” scheme.
Comet has teamed up with manufacturer BSH Home Appliances to offer customers a 20% discount if they trade-in their old appliances for a new model.
People can reportedly trade in any old appliances in exchange for a cut-price Bosch, Siemens or Neff washing machine, dishwasher, refrigerator or cooker.
Starting to sound more like a sales drive on BSH Group products already… we smell a rat!
Available deals include a Siemens dishwasher, reduced from £619.90 to £495.90, a saving of £124. The biggest reduction is on a Bosch washing machine, which has a normal retail price of £979.99 but is reduced to £783.99 through the trade-in scheme.
The promotion comes after the British Retail Consortium called for the government to introduce a car industry-style scrappage scheme for white goods.
“What we really want to see is a removal of VAT from energy efficient appliances,” a spokesman for the BRC said. “But this could be kick-started through a time-limited scrappage scheme for those buying energy saving recommended’ products.”
The spokesman welcomed the Comet initiative as a step towards that. “This is the kind of thing we want to see, but we do want to see the government introducing a universal scheme,” he said.
Only thing is, it seems to us it’s more of a promotion by Bosch Neff Siemens on their own products and not really by Comet in much the same vein as Sony has done on their products.
Expect others to follow if sales don’t pick up.