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Rental Business Aaron's Admits Role In Spying On Customers
New submitter bhv writes "After firmly denying that it used software on its rent-to-own computers to spy on customers, including capturing passwords, sensitive financial information and images of private intimate moments, Atlanta-based Aaron's has owned up to the practice in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission."
Aaron's and similar rental companies are built on taking advantage of lower income folks who are not good financial decision makers. While there is an element of that with many businesses, these rental companies take it to the extreme.
It's a rent to own store and from a brief stint working in one (quite a few years ago) I can say that most of the clients were people who had bad credit and too poor or unable to save enough to buy *new* furniture/electronics outright.
How it works? They take full MSRP (which usually gives you 100% markup) double *that* price then divide up into payments. So as an example a living room set with a $1500 MSRP (which probably cost them $700) would end up being $125 a month OR $57.70 a week (Easy Payments!). If the customer paid through the two years required to own it they would have paid $3000 for a couch they could have gotten for sale elsewhere for about $1200.
The horrendous markup is more visible in electronics (a PS2 in it's day would have cost someone close to $1000 by the end of the year rent-to-own period).
You are totally correct. The best situation for a consumer in that situation is to get furniture from either Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Craigslist, or the local newspaper classifieds. If they still want *new* furniture, then they can enjoy the used stuff till they save enough to buy what they really want outright (and re-sell the used item).
Working that job made me realize that schools *must* have a personal finances class which goes over budgeting, avoiding scams, and setting up an affordable household.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
It serves a useful purpose, if you use it for a short term needs. When I was an undergraduate in upstate New York, the "College Housing" cartels charged more than double the market rate for furnished apartments with shorter-term leases. It made far more sense to rent an unfurnished apartment intended for the locals with a one year lease, and just pay the extra rent for the two months most of us weren't there in the summer. Since most 18-21 year olds don't own furniture, nor wanted to be responsible for moving / storing / dealing with it. we could annually rent a full living room set with a big television - no one was responsible for buying it, we didn't have to split up possessions between roommates at the end of the year, and splitting the cost of all of it between four guys for 8-10 months was reasonable. At the end of the academic term we would call up the rental company and have them pick it all up. Next fall, we'd get the latest and greatest for that year delivered and moved in. rinse and repeat.
Working that job made me realize that schools *must* have a personal finances class which goes over budgeting, avoiding scams, and setting up an affordable household.
The public schools already teach this. My daughter is in high school, and she had the class last year. It is called "Life Skills". They learn to budget and invest. They write a resume, dress in business attire, and attend a mock job interview. They also learn to plan and cook meals using a budget and nutritional information. It is an elective class, but nearly everyone takes it (it is an easy A, plus you get to make and eat cookies).
The problem is that some people are just fundamentally stupid and irresponsible. No amount of education is going to fix that. The main problem is that these people can vote, so their irresponsibility is inflicted on all of us. If you run up twice your disposable income in credit card debt to pay for useless bling, then why shouldn't the government do the same?