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. Logistics and shipping were a lot slower. 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.