Comment on Disability pensioner charged $6,760 for renting a phone that retails for around $1,800
Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 10 months agoUsury is a crime in most places. This kind of transaction is just usury dressed up in the legal fiction of a rental.
wahming@monyet.cc 10 months ago
I dunno, seems like a pretty big stretch to call equipment rental usury.
Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 10 months ago
Not at all. A rent to own scheme is essentially legally identical to getting a seller or third party loan except for when title passes over to the consumer. In most other respects, especially in outcome, it’s the same transaction dressed up specifically to avoid existing usury laws.
wahming@monyet.cc 10 months ago
Interesting point. Though I have to wonder if making it illegal would just change their sales pitch to permanent rental, instead of rent to own. Ultimately, I feel the solution should lie more in educating consumers on financial literacy.
Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 10 months ago
You can crack down on predatory lending and educate consumers. However, you’ll never be able to educate the average consumer to be immune from sophisticated schemes simply because most people have other things to do on life and scammers devote a lot more time creating new scams than the average person can devote to learning about avoiding scams.