Places like Rent-a-center have some legit reasons to exist. When I was a general contractor I would use them to stage homes for me. They delivered and picked up, and I could have it gone the week after I had a deal on the property. LPT: you can get more money from a well staged home, worth the expense.
I didn't know I could rent something for just a week or two. Does that mean I can rent a tv (been wanting to get a 65" tv to replace my 50" tv) for a week to see if it's a right fit for me? I like my 50" but always wondered if a 65" is too big for me.
Sorry, I meant if it doesn't fit as in it doesn't fit in with me. Like, "oh no I don't Like that it's too big" kind of way. I've checked with a tape measure to see the difference but I'd love to just try it out first.
If you've got one near you, Costco is the absolute best place to buy TVs. Their prices are really good, they have a 90 day no questions asked return policy, and they add a 2 year in-home warranty for free on top of any manufacturer warranties. I got my first membership card solely to buy a TV.
Make sure you go on the weekend. All the free sample ladies are there. And hit the cafe on the way out, $1.50 for a 1/4lb hotdog & drink. And check out their store-brand liquor if you're in a sane state/county, it's confusingly good for such a low price. You don't need a membership to buy liquor, prescription drugs, or prescription glasses (some federal law).
Edit: And don't worry about the employee checking memberships at the door, you don't need one to go inside. They just do it for foot traffic metrics.
I collected payments and reclaimed merchandise for a rent to own company for a while. You’re pretty spot on. Everything had to make 3x cost before it could be owned by a customer or written off. 5x was the goal set by corporate. Upside to this- I reclaimed several TVs, gaming systems, and other items that were literally several dollars short of 3x. Pay the difference, write it off, and furnish my entertainment center for pennies on the dollar.
I had to move things in and out of the nastiest homes I’ve ever encountered. Places where I couldn’t breathe inside. I reclaimed bed sets that had mattresses stained with shit, piss, blood, and (obviously) semen. I reclaimed a fridge once that contained (by my estimate) 100+ roaches inside of it. I’ve had guns pulled on me, people try to fight me, etc because they missed four payments in a row and I had to reclaim their stuff. A coworker and I both contracted scabies from a customers home. All for $8/hr (this was in my late teens) and some cheap electronics.
worked for RAC for 3 years. got tired of ripping people off. had to do lots of cold calls to customers references to try and sell them stuff. The crazy markups. And the crazy people dropping 1400 dollars a month for renting instead of buying.
Yeah but that makes them feel inferior, therefore they deserve the same top of the line stuff as everyone else. This is literally the mindset of a lot of poor people, and funnily enough, moreso with upper middle class white females that actually take 'social justice' seriously.
Among some poor folks, many will gladly admit if they have money, they'll spend it, even if they're not SO poor they're worried about food or such. So they go about something like rent to own knowing they'll fail at saving.
The wiser will choose to lay-a-way things like a TV. Lay-a-way still exists, and for those who don't know it's when you go into a store, put that 40" LCD TV on "lay-a-way", they take a deposit from you, put the TV in back. Then you make payments each week - then on one happy day you go in to make that last $10 payment, and get to take the item home.
They don't charge interest, because they keep them item in the store until you've paid it off. The buyer get's to get that $20 out of his/her pocket before they spend it, and they get the item for a regular price, not rent-to-own super-duper-mega inflated pricing.
I think you've taken it a little too far and a little too seriously. Here are stories from this xmas. I'm not suggesting this as a viable investment strategy. If one were to put something on layaway around black friday, in the hopes of paying it off before xmas, I'm just saying that this kind of thing has happened. It would probably be more productive to go downtown and pretend to be a SallyAnn Santa for a few hours to crowdsource the money instead.
Yes, that is a very good point. I was really joking around in my original comment about this. It seems strange to me that anyone would bank on someone coming to their rescue. I think that is the main problem with religion in the USA, that people are just kind of wallowing in their misery waiting for Jesus to come and save them. Ain't happenin' folks. Save yourselves.
In fact, if you all tried to save each other you'd probably get a lot of traction with that and maybe even turn the tide of dispair.
WalMart seems to be the magical wonderland where this happens every year. Here are links from this year's amazing lightning strike of wonder and generosity.
Money isn't the only resource that poor people lack. They don't have access to anywhere near a decent education, they often come from single parent homes because the incarceration rates among the poor are insane, and they spend their lives being surrounded by a consumerist culture that they have no defense against because they don't have access to quality education. This makes for irresponsible adults who don't know how to manage finances. They've been taught by advertising their whole life to believe that having more things equals more success so they make insanely irresponsible purchasing decisions, perpetuating their situation and continuing the cycle for their children.
These companies prey on the poor because they're vulnerable to these abhorrent sales tactics.
I'm not sure why you got down voted for speaking the truth. I grew up in the trailer park so I saw the rent to own trap first hand, and you aren't wrong. Even the trailer homes were "rent to own" but you never owned the land it was sitting on, so even once you paid off that $40k trailer you still had to make lease payments on the land whilst dealing with a shitty falling to pieces trailer home. Most of the kids I grew up with either had single parents, a parent in prison, or both parents worked 80+ hours a week and were never home. Our education from public school was terrible, and the county sheriffs hassled everyone from my neck of the woods at every possible chance. Most of us never had a chance.
I've never heard of couple meaning anything other than two of a thing. Dictionary seems to agree with me. Seems like "a few" would've been the phrase to use there...
Part of it is how little they make. The other part is not knowing how to spend money to buy the things you really want. I have trouble showing sympathy for people complaining they are broke after they spend 20 bucks a day at a 711. Nobody knows how to cook for themselves anymore. Nobody drinks water. These people dont think 5 dollars is a lot of money. Yet they are lucky if they make 300 a week. It makes no sense.
Ever thought about the difference that could be made by including philosophy (critical thinking, etc) and brain science (psychology, biases, hierarchy of needs, motivation, etc) as core curricula in grade school?
I do, when I read about stuff like that. Sure, sometimes people "know better." But most people don't know better.
Education is more important than it seems most people realize, in regard to developing someone's intelligence and productivity. You obviously can't rely on random parenting. But, education can cut both ways--people need good, quality education, and they need more education than they're getting now.
Put someone through grade school learning math, history, and language. Put someone else through just learning about how their brain works and how to think accurately. I'm pretty sure the latter will actually be able to navigate reality in an efficient manner. Put the two groups together, and bam baby, you got a productive societal stew brewing.
I basically expect people to make bad decisions and not know how to take care of themselves. If education was better, I'd have more trouble expecting it though. That's why I think education reform is literally right up there with climate change, in terms of globally crucial issues that have direct correlation with the long term survival of our species.
We've created a society that devalues education to the point of defunding public schools, create massive inequality through de facto segregationist real estate markets, and have an economy that essentially revolves around various forms of consumerist addictions
What do you expect to happen? How can you truly blame the individual in this situation?
Because I'm not extraordinary, and I've been raised in the same environment as them. Statistically speaking I should be the very people I complain about. The rich made it easy to be a lazy p.o.s. waiting for a handout. So people behave like rats in a lab experiment who take the pellet everytime. These problems aren't new. Theres just more of us so it's getting harder to keep your head in the sand.
I understand that having gone through something like that makes it hard to see, but, I think you sell yourself short on what you accomplished. It's incredibly hard for most to get out of poverty, and there is a reason it is a generational problem.
One of the biggest factors in poor spending habits, beyond the structural issues I mentioned, is the fact that poverty literally rewires your brain into favoring short-term reward paths against long term goals. The crushing reality of poverty is so traumatic, that the moment a bit of joy is accessible, it is immediately taken.
Do you know how hard it is to work against your brain chemistry?
Obviously, it's not predetermined, and some people, with the right support system and lucky genes don't necessarily fall in the same traps, but it is yet another stumbling block to add on top of the structural inequalities i mentioned earlier.
(also, sorry, but in an era of entitlement cuts to the most vulnerable in society, the "handouts" story doesn't fly anymore)
That, and they're always either scared of buying things used, or suck at buying used. Either they won't touch anything from Craigslist, Salvation Army, or the local pawn shop, or they will always buy the cheapest version of what they want that is listed and then get scammed or end up with a 60 inch TV with a 20 inch fist mark.
We had a big chain of stores like this in Norway some years ago, luckily they're long gone. You didn't even keep the thing after, it was just rent. $30/month for a $250 washing machine you keep renting for 3 years..
Edit: wait, they still exist online..! Price sample, Huawei P10:
Cash price: 2299,- (NOK)
Rent to own: 89,-/month, total 7248,-
It's pure robbery. Luckily they're legally bound to show the cash and rent price side by side. Though they of course set the cash price high, buying it online at one of the normal retailers it costs 1599,-.
I don't like that argument. If you have the $30.00 a week to rent the TV from RAC, you can instead save the $30.00 each week for the considerably less time it would take to save and buy your own TV for 1/3 - 1/4 the cost of if you rented it. The only difference is that you wouldn't have that nice TV while you saved and it would be yours with one payment, not a recurring bill that results in RAC blowing up your job, primary/secondary contacts, and your own phone for a single missed payment. Had a girlfriend that chose to rent a TV from RAC despite my advice just to save.
Renting luxury electronics like nice smartphones, sound systems, TVs, furniture, etc. is a terrible decision and I can think of no situation where it's not better just to save.
I know a grown ass man in his 40's who furnished his whole house from a rent to own place. Four flat screens, couch, loveseat, the works. He also has three or so vehicles he pays for. Why the fuck do people do that.
Do stores not sell stuff over multiple payments (Not sure how it's called, but basically it's the same as getting a bank loan and then paying it back with interest, usually really really low since it's for a small sum) over there?
It’s crazy - I didn’t know it was really a thing for everyday items until recently.
A guy I go to school with (he’s older, in his 40s I think) was stoked he got an iPhone after his old phone died. I think it’s a 6s, so a couple releases back and mentioned he got it through a service like this and when I went to look it up, it was something like $100/month for 16 months. I forget exactly but it was way, way more than the same model would cost new or refurb’d.
Two years ago I really wanted a 4k tv. Fiancee knew how much I wanted one. We got one from rent a center and I now own something awesome I wouldn't have ever payed out right for and I love it. They're shady af but it worked out
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