November 9, 2022 • 53 mins
In the modern day, many individuals define their lives in terms of large financial purchases -- buying a house, a home, or an appliance. Acquiring debt from higher schooling or a medical procedure, and so on. When you can't pay all at once, you get a loan. When you can't get a loan, you look elsewhere... and, it turns out, there's a multibillion dollar industry waiting to sell you a dream. So, what happens next? In today's episode, the guys dive into the troubling evolution of the "rent-to-own" industry, and what it means for the shift from an ownership society to a world of constant renters. They don’t want you to read our book.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. It's a show that you don't
have to uh pay crazy interest for, you know. We
(00:48):
all we ask is that you pay a bit of
the most valuable currency of this time attention. Why are
we talking about payments in installments? It's because today's topic
for plants may sound a little strange for a show
that applies critical thoughts and conspiracies. But as we've established,
all sorts of shenanigans can occur in the strangest, most
(01:11):
ostensibly innocuous places. Uh, Noel, Matt, have either of you
ever ever been in a rent to own store like
a rent a center or an errands? No? But I
always remark about, like what is this, who is it for?
And why is it so big. Yeah, I've been in
(01:33):
a Errands. There was one right down by my old house,
and I went in there early on when I moved
to the Atlanta area, and it was to really look
at prices of things. And I didn't know anything back then,
so I didn't realize that the prices that were represented
in there were actually very different than the prices at
other large retailers. Did you think Errands was just like
(01:55):
a big box store or did you understand? I didn't
know what it was, but I look through and everything
seemed way too expensive for me. Yeah, it's a common Uh,
it's common observation many people throughout the United States. Weirdly enough,
not so much in the United Kingdom. That statement will
make sense later Today the show presents the case of
(02:17):
an industry that just may have weaponized the American dream.
Don't believe that's hyperbolic language either, which should frighten people.
Stuff then, which you know is talking about the rent
to own industry note important housekeeping note, not the rent
to own home industry, where people rent a house from
a landlord, company or individual with the idea of one
(02:40):
day owning it. Uh. That's a separate future episode. This
episode is about a quite common and quite controversial practice
of renting appliances, putting things on take it home kind
of layaway, apply aiances, furniture, video game consoles, you name it.
(03:04):
The show will get into it today. Here are the
facts for these purposes. What does stuff they don't want
you to to know mean when it says rent to own?
Or even in this day and age, um the idea
of you know, owning your phone or like, what is
that you know, payment that's built into your bill that
allows you to get the newest, hottest, most up to
(03:25):
date phone you know, right when you want it, even
if you don't want to pay the full price. And
another think we're gonna talk about is how ultimately irrelevant
at the end of the day the actual price becomes. Yes.
For so, for our purposes today on this episode, rent
to own means entering into a contractual agreement with a
third party. That's you right, You enter an agreement with
(03:47):
that party to take home something. As we mentioned before,
let's say a couch, and then to pay either on
a weekly or monthly basis for that couch. It will
generally be a much smaller pain meant than how much
the couch costs but you're going to be making that
payment for an extended period of time. Yeah, so think
(04:07):
of things like buying a vehicle, buying a house, large
appliances you know, a refrigerator isn't cheap, or furniture a
nice sofa set. This also can include things like student loans,
epic vacations. In the United States, this unfortunately includes life
saving or life breaking medical procedures and so on. The
(04:29):
thing is, the harsh reality is that not everyone can
immediately buy these goods and services with cash upfront. That's
why people take out loans or pay for things in
installment plans, lay away at old school brick and mortar stores,
or most commonly for people, paying off a phone as
part of one's monthly bill. When this all works out,
(04:51):
it's a win win for stakeholders. People are able to
acquire their stuff, manufacturers sell their stuff. Banks make money
all the time off the interests. That's accepted as normal.
The concept of rent to own takes it a step
further into all sorts of products and honestly, fellow conspiracy realists,
(05:12):
for many people, this is the only viable way to
make necessary purchases. Let's not make the mistake of vilifying
the poor, as convenient as it may be for all
sorts of bad faith actors, these are not luxurious things.
There's not avocado, toast, etcetera. One would argue this is
(05:33):
stuff that people need to survive, but it's not free.
The rent to own outfits are taking on risks, so
they always tack on a higher interest rate per month.
Big question, how did this become a thing? Because I
got to guarantee you not to inject personal opinion in here.
(05:54):
Most things that seem sketchy are older than they seem
as well. Yeah, um so. Historians usually trace the concept
of the rent to own industry back to the early
twentie century in the United Kingdom, uh to two people
Percy Pairing's Tom's and another gentleman in Austrian businessman named
(06:16):
Jules Thorne uh and the first rent to own establishment
brick and mortar kind of storefront radio rentals. Well, also
that term in the UK, I believe ultimately became like
a that's crazy. Uh, that's that that's radio rental and um,
(06:36):
I think that's probably a reference to like who would
be crazy enough to do one of these things? I'm
just speculating here, but we're gonna get to that. That
came in nineteen thirty. Um because of Percy Pairing's Tom's
um who was from Brighton. He was a radio dealer
who thought that, you know, with the advent of radio
and it being the hot thing and keeping up with
(06:57):
the jones is mentality and all, he thought that people
were going to be really really you know, um desperate
to get a radio, you know, so they wouldn't feel
left out of the conversation. I mean, there was so
much culture happening on the radio, and you didn't have one,
then you weren't. You kind of almost felt like a
second class citizen. So um, he took advantage of that,
let's say, insecurity from some folks that maybe couldn't afford it. Um,
(07:20):
instead of a situation where you could rent radios to consumers,
rather than having them purchased them with cash on the
barrelhead as it were. It is very interesting when you
look at today's rent a centerville or whatever you want
to call this thing, the industry of renting goods, because
that's translated from radios to television's. Televisions are one of
(07:41):
the most rented things from these rent rental centers. I
guess we call them. I know. I only know that
because there's a place called rent a Center, which is
interesting to considering how much cheaper televisions have gotten. You know,
it used to be back in the day, to get
the nicest plasma screen or whatever, you'd be spending a
(08:02):
grand or more, you know minimum, But nowadays you can
get it perfectly fine l C D H H D
t V first a couple of hundred bucks. So it
does also imply that people are praying on folks. Uh,
lack of awareness of what else is available in the market. Yeah,
to sew that up real quick, there's another guy in
the story, Jules Thorne. You might not have heard of
(08:24):
Jules Thorne if you were not from the United Kingdom.
In night, this Austrian businessman moved to England, made something
called the Electrical Lamp Service Company, imports lightbulbs and radio components.
Two he gets uh, he starts playing the monopolization game.
(08:45):
He operates his own radio rental shop, Lotus Radio, and
thirty three later he acquires pairing Tom's old business. Uh.
This business model made sense. Everybody wanted a radio, they
wanted to keep up with the Joneses and to keep
up with the news, to have their fingers on the
pulse of the zeitgeist. But of course not everyone can
(09:07):
pony up to become an early adopter. Not everyone has
the cash to buy one of these new fangled gadgets
or gizmos all at once. Same with television's UH. When
televisions became mainstream, the rental companies made a killing off
that as well. There's a nineteen sixty two article from
Time magazine which you can find online that shows eighty
(09:31):
percent of British television sets in the early nineteen sixties
were rented. Less than one percent of US televisions were UH,
and the ones in the US that were rented were
mostly rented by hotels. You can find vintage advertisements from
London in particular that show the the appeal of this.
(09:55):
They included free service warranties essentially, which are not always
included in the US rent to own debacle that's happening today.
But maybe, uh, maybe it's time talking about how it's
spread across the Atlantic. How did it get from the
UK to the US. I want to just add, you
have a really excellent clipping UM and then the outline
today from one of those ads and it says two
(10:17):
years free service tubes and valves, et cetera. Because you know,
this kind of analog technology ran on these expendable parts
that would not last forever, like a tube or a
valve something. It's like a light bulb essentially, it will
like burn out. And you know, the folks consumers were
not educated and how to repair their own stuff unless
(10:40):
they were tinkerers. Let's just say so, you know, someone
might think, oh, my my TV is completely dead, and
they just wouldn't know that I just need to order
this thing and you literally just pop it in. It's
the easiest thing in the world to do. But they're
capitalizing on that um sort of ignorance as well. It's
really good that you point that out and all, because
that remains and I'm sure we'll get into it a
little further, but that remains as one of the biggest
(11:02):
selling points for for one of these rentals service companies
is that they will service whatever it is that you
per whatever it is you're renting from them, they will
service it free of charge. Anything you need, will take
care of it. For a dishwasher or something that matters.
That's almost the equivalent of having like a landlord that
if your stuff goes out, they're gonna fix it. You're
(11:23):
not gonna be responsible for like figuring that out. So
that could to some people also be appealing, unless they're
one of the large scale financial institutions that are buying
up all the rental property in the United States. But yeah, yeah,
it's true. So the idea hit the United States around
the fifties and sixties when a couple of you know,
(11:45):
American entrepreneurs um pioneered that concept, or at least you
know americanized let's just say Charles louder Milk, and we
used to have a colleague with the last name louder Milk.
I've always loved that name. There's a blues guitarist. I
think also like the named louder Milk. I think it's
very very Nashville, old school country Western kind of vibes.
(12:06):
And uh, this guy, Charles louder Milk, Sr. Was actually
from right here in Atlanta, and I think I'm right here. Um.
He found that a company called Aron Rents, which must
have rebranded to become Errand's Rentals or that place or
just Errands. I think, well, you know, and that makes
sense why you wouldn't have realized it was one of
these rent places or rent a centers. You just thought
(12:28):
it was like a big box, maybe affordable kind of
you know storefront. Yeah. I think I'm just not very
smart guys. I think they're I think okay, I think, well,
if they got you, they definitely probably get others, because
I would argue you're quite savvy and very smart. Um.
And you know, without the word rental or rent a
(12:50):
center type deal in the name, you could easily confuse
it for just a showroom of like fancy home goods.
You know. Hey, speaking of that, there is a place
called rent Center though, and it's been around for a while. Yeah,
we see that around here as well. Um. And even
the logo is very old school looking. Yeah. Aaron Errands,
as it's known today, the Eron's company started out as
(13:13):
Aaron Rents in nineteen fifty five. They had a bunch
of surplus chairs from the U. S. Army. They rented
him out for ten cents a day. Rent rent a
Center is founded by j Arnist Tally, who t A. L. L. E. Y,
who is nowadays largely acknowledged as the father of the
modern uh rent to own industry in the United States,
(13:37):
similar to how Edward Bernes is often called the father
of public relations. Uh, this guy comes out of Kansas.
He has this retail appliance store. And in the nineteen
fifties there was this issue about bank credit. You have
to remember, folks, this is before the dawn of the
credit card economy, and that plays a huge role in
(14:00):
what went wrong here. Uh. Bank credit prevented a lot
of people from walking in and buying an appliance of
some sort. Right, So he said, why don't I rent
it out? And if people can't meet their monthly payment,
I can always this him talking, I can always repossess
the merchandise. When we reached the end of this take
(14:23):
home layaway, which is just a term made up for
this show. It's not something that you'll find in the industry. Uh,
they would own the merchandise. Tolly would have some cool
stuff happening. On the other side, it would have had
guaranteed income monthly, right month over month, And he would
have also been able to look at his spreadsheet and
(14:43):
say that he increased sales or his company did. Observers
are watching this, and just like when Catchup hits the
mainstream in the eighteen hundred's, a lot of other people
get into the game, and that's what leads you here
to this episode. According to the Association and Progressive Rental Organizations,
(15:07):
the size of the rent to own industry as of
twenty fourteen fifteen, those are the most comprehensive numbers now
it tops eight point five billion dollars In the United
States alone, you can see all uh pre pandemic. You
can see almost ten thousand different retailers selling this stuff
(15:30):
throughout Canada, Mexico. In the US, rent A Center alone
is a big player. That's probably two thousand, four hundred stores.
This could be seen as a win win again when
everything's above the board. But today's question what happens when
things aren't above the board? And how come so many
(15:52):
people think this is a hotbed of corruption and indeed conspiracy.
Pausing for a moment or word from the sponsors and
diving in, here's where it gets crazy. It turns out
(16:13):
this industry, as undeniably profitable as it is, has a
ton of critics for several incredibly valid and disturbing reasons.
One of the biggest reasons we've already kind of been
hinting at it's that you're gonna pay a lot more
money in the end if you're renting one of these
goods rather than if you just went out and purchased it.
(16:35):
You're you're going to be paying a much larger price
in the end, and people see that as predatory for sure.
Like you're essentially, as the owner of one of these
stores or as the person is running one of these stores,
you are getting your giving a loan basically out in
the form of a good and then you're just making interest,
(16:58):
like lots and lots of interest in stuff on the
top of somebody who probably can't afford it well. And
I imagine all of that stuff happens in house, Like
it's not like this is being financed through a bank.
You're essentially on the hook like you would be to
a loan shark or something. I mean, not to be
too hyperbolic, but it is a company um that is
not a bank, probably has affiliations with banks and things
(17:19):
like that, But you're you haven't like signed up for
a loan exactly right, Like it's sort of is that,
but it also kind of isn't. Essentially, I guess it's
just kind of a bad loan. I don't know who
writes the laws would be the question. Yeah. The most
telling aspect of the way these stores do business in
the modern day is the pricing. If you have ever
(17:43):
traveled this, this is way more common outside of the
the US and Canada. If you've ever traveled to certain countries,
you'll walk into a store and there's not a price,
and so you want to buy something and you ask
what the prices and they'll say for you x amount
of whatever currency there is. And the understanding here is
(18:05):
that the customer must negotiate. But again that doesn't happen
in the US near as often. In most of these establishments,
the prices are not clearly marked. There are, however, very
well trained associates ready to help you find out prices
(18:25):
in terms of the lease. I would just say some
of that has changed a little bit now that a
lot of these places have moved online. I don't know,
I don't know how much of their business has done
online versus inside the store, but I know they they
have a thing sometimes that I've seen on their websites,
on renaissent or in particular, where you're not exactly sure
how much it costs until you put in some of
(18:46):
your location information, you put in a couple of extra things,
then you can get at least an estimated price on
how much it will cost. But you're right, man, it
is different in that it's it's not so clear, I
don't think, and often it's it's made to look like
there's a sale or something, or it's it's going to
be less now than it would be usually if you
(19:07):
do it right now. That's the illusion of of of
big box kind of stories. Like I used to work
at a music shop when I was younger, and we
would you know, it's kind of an old school, family
owned operation, and we had to price everything with little,
you know, tags with like a piece of string on it.
You'd put around the the tuning key of the guitar
and it would have a price on it, and then
slashed through that price would write this by pen and
(19:29):
then it would have your price, and then they would
give you a better price than even that because they
had just liked the cut of your jib or whatever
it might have been. But the slash through price is
what's called list price, which is the price that nobody pays.
It's sort of this like weird standardizing thing, I guess.
And then the price that's under there would be what
(19:51):
would be retail right, and then even that's too high,
So it gives them room to haggle and give the
illusion of a good deal. And I had to do that,
like I was trained. It made me feel so ichy.
I hated it. Um, but that's their whole business model
kind of. And once the Internet came along, they hated
the Internet, let me tell you, because that gave everyone
(20:11):
kind of level the playing field, right right. Uh. Siloing
information is always one of the go too's of manipulative
entities and bad faith actors. Uh. This stuff regarding the
conversation about how online sales may have changed things also
is doing large parts to something in the US called
(20:32):
the Better Business Bureau. No to your earlier example, an
analog in the world of automotives would be blue Book
Price Kelly's blue Book Price. It is the common go
to of how much a vehicle may or may not
be worth, and nobody pays it. Uh. The other the
(20:52):
next thing in your comparison there would be uh M
s r P manufacturers suggested retail price, which again people
don't often pay. The big insidious psychological aspect at play.
There is something called anchoring. Right, you want somebody to
pay thirty dollars for something that's worth fourteen dollars. You
(21:13):
have a fifty dollar price tag just slashed out arbitrarily,
there's no law against it, and all of a sudden,
thirties starts to look like a good deal, especially when you,
as a bad faith actor, have restricted access to information
showing this stuff is worth fourteen dollars. Those are deceptive
sales practices. Better Business Bureau is mad about it. Failure
(21:36):
to disclose interest rates. That's another thing they're mad about.
Legally speaking, if you find yourself in a position where
you feel you need to go to one of these
companies and they are all operating legally, they're not breaking
the law. They are required to tell you if you ask.
(21:57):
It's another thing this show in the asked is called
the guacamole rule. It's available upon request. Uh. And interest rate.
I'm got to tell you that we're required by law,
as a Chipotle employed, to tell you that guacamole is extra. Uh.
These interest rates can be what is often called you serious,
(22:19):
which means predatory. Uh. In In this sense, interest rates
can be up to or even higher, and they're often
in effect when do this rent to own option because
it's technically not alone, so it doesn't trip the flags
that various states have about you sious or predatory loans. Instead,
(22:43):
it's a lease. The product can be returned at any
time during that least term. You as the consumer will
not get your money back. You overpaid for a television,
You've paid twice what the TV is worth. You just
want to bring it back and get out of this
uh terrible con Then you absolutely are free to do so,
(23:04):
as long as it's a working order. There will probably
be some fees involved because you know the company is
working to maximize the amount of uh, your money it
can take. So why do people consider it predatory? It's
a good question. And also by that point, they've probably
restocked that TV. I bet stores like this only keep
(23:25):
a certain amount of inventory where it's not like a
big box store where they have like a whole warehouse
full of the things. They probably just have a couple
and then they're banking on that one being out of
the store for a long term situation, and then they
just restocked that one item. Every time it goes they
probably just restock it again. Well, you know, there's an
interesting idea there. No, because it's worth asking the question. Many,
(23:48):
many big box stores, regardless of what they're selling, use
something called it just in time supply chain, and that
really the hammer hit the nail, uh during the pay endemic,
when supply chains were collapsing, and all of a sudden,
a lot of US residents who had never had this
experience before would go to a place. They'd see that
(24:10):
the prices hadn't just risen. Consumers simply could not buy
the stuff there. It wasn't there on the shelves. And
it went way beyond toilet paper and hand sanitizers, switch
or the PlayStation five. Perhaps, Uh, stay tuned, Maybe there's
an episode about semi conductors in Taiwan in the future.
In the meantime, here are some numbers from a great,
(24:34):
a great piece written by Matt Breed, one for an
outfit called money Crashers, and it hits on something very important. Uh,
fellow conspiracy realist, fellow listeners, hope you clocked this. So
twenty twenty one, not all that long ago. Uh, Matt
Breed went in and checked out these places the same
(24:58):
way someone might accidentally walk to a store because you
don't know it's trying to rip you off. H Breed
found that a forty l c D TV was priced
two ways. You could buy it right now, take it
home that day for the low low price of one thousand,
one hundred dollars and cents not counting tax. Or you
(25:24):
could rent to own it, and if you're on time,
that price at a six interest rate would work out
to one thousand, nine nine dollars and seventy six cents.
Here's the kicker, and thanks for this, Matt Breed. The
lowest price for the same product if you had the
wherewithal to check into it four hundred dollars. But even
(25:48):
then this is based on maybe someone doesn't have four
hundred Maybe they know about the cheaper product and they
know it's good or just as good, but they don't
have five hundred bucks, and they don't have enough credit
to get a decent term credit card to buy that
that TV for five bucks, or to even just get
(26:08):
financing with the store right wherever you would buy it. Yeah,
this episode gets gets to this too, and these are
quite disturbing things to your earlier question regarding supply chainnel
It's interesting that if you're selling a five hundred dollar
television for two thousand dollars, then you can already pay
(26:30):
you know, more than three times over more than treble
what what you know? You can buy three more TVs
a minimum. That's just that's just lazy cocktail maths subtracting
for overhead. You see it again with refrigerators. Actually, one
of the best deals Matt Breed found was an Xbox.
But it may be helpful for our fellow listeners to
(26:53):
walk through just a couple more examples of how egregious
this is? Can I give you one? I found a
Errands just I wanted to find, like right now, how
much something would cost? Like do do do this exact
thing that Matt Breed did, but with with Errands, just
because I wanted to see just a year later, by
the way, yeah, one year later. So you guys, how
much do you think it would cost to go out
(27:14):
and buy a Nintendo switch right now? Like right now?
Three bucks? Right almost exactly, three hundred dollars for just
the base set. Right if you go over to Errands,
you can get it right now. They'll deliver it to
you for free. They will service it for you as
long as you've got it, and all you have to
do is make twelve easy payments of But the big
(27:38):
kicker there, and the reason why people do it, I think,
is because Errands offers a one time fee of five
dollars to get it shipped to you and get the
process started. I think I think that might be the
kicker guys, because it's like, here's five dollars, I'll get
it right now, and then I have to make my
payment at some point, you know, this month or twelve payments,
(28:04):
twelve payments of eighty dollars. That's almost a thousand dollars
for the switch. It is nine hundred and fifty nine
eight cents in total if you went the whole twelve months,
which it's just crazy to me, it's three times the
price of the actual product. Yeah, and the video game
consoles are less profitable overall than things like a refrigerator,
(28:28):
for instance, a twenty three cubic foot refrigerator. That's one
penny under fift bucks to buy it now six interest.
That's a little less than two thousand, four hundred for
the same thing. Lowest price if you go almost anywhere
else seven hundred bucks money hand over fist, dude, but
like that was well you just said, Matt though, was
(28:50):
like way worse than this. It was like six hundred
extra bucks on top of the basic price of the switch.
And the question then becomes, like, what's the monthly aiment?
And do they assess that based on how bad your
credit score is? And can they jerk you around even
with that to make it a little better for them
(29:10):
a little sweeter? No? Yeah, I mean I I don't
know the specifics of Like I haven't actually gone in
and tried to enter into an agreement, and honestly, I
don't think I would even even if it was just
fact finding, just because I'm scared. It scares me. Uh,
some of I would want an attorney present. I think
it's mafia type practices. It really is. It's like a
what do they call that bust out? Like when when
(29:31):
the mafia like takes over someone, Like in The Sopranos,
they take over this guy's sporting goods business and they
just bleed him dry by like taking his inventory and
selling it in Times Square and then taking out loans
in his name. And they don't do it all in
one go, They just do it over time, until he's
just gotten nothing left. Then I want to get the
point you made earlier, which was about you know, it's
(29:53):
some of these things are uh necessary to live, right
And if you think about a refrigerator, people need to
have cold food, and especially if you're on a budget
and you need to save money, you need to have
a place to keep your food cold to serve it
to your family or even to yourself. Right. Well, Similarly,
washers and dryers are a very common good that are
(30:13):
rented from these places, and I found a similar thing
at Renaissenter. You guys, it was to own it over
the course of a hundred and twenty payments, one payment
per week. It would costs to get this pretty standard
washer and dryer a week. Though that's interesting, like, yes,
(30:34):
it was a week pay in any other you know,
professional loan arrangement. Never that sounds like our rent by
the hour hotel or something like. It's very I mean,
I'm just saying it's it's odd because it's thirty five
dollars a week, thirty ninety nine a week to have
this washer and dryer in your house, and you can
have it for a hundred and twenty weeks after that
(30:56):
you own it, and if you work that math out,
it is five thousand, two hundred and seventy eight dollars
and eighty cents. And if you go to the Whirlpool website,
the manufacturer of that object, and we're talking about the
M s RP for both of those things, that cost
so again you could see the common pattern here, fellow listeners. Uh,
(31:18):
to not miss uh, the point we're attempting to establish
there with the video game consoles and Xbox three sixty
Halo Bundle for the discriminating customer is sold by these
kind of places for six thirty bucks. Rent to own
is little under eight hundred and forty dollars. That's thirty
(31:40):
three percent interest was that which is actually a better
deal than these appliances. Lowest price, uh, fellow game enthusiasts
will know at that time was about four hundred dollars.
You know, that's really interesting that it's a an Xbox
three sixty for that price for and to get it
for that much, it would cost that much because that's
(32:03):
last year, and I'm pretty sure the X series or
the Xbox X series came out, and before that, the
Xbox One came out. So I wonder, like, I wonder
why places even offering an Xbox three sixty as a
standard rental. Or maybe they just have so much inventory
of those they can get away with renting a bunch
of them out and they're making just a ton of
(32:24):
money back. I guess yeah, an Xbox right now on
Amazon is a hundred and fifteen bucks and it's refurbished. Weird.
You might not be surprised to learn that there are
lawsuits that become part of this. Tons of consumer advocate
organizations have combated the deceptive, misleading, and again not to
(32:46):
overuse the word just to accurately describe it predatory practices
used by the r T O rent to own industry. Uh.
A lot of these campaigns are seeking better state legislation. Uh,
there's talking about this obstucation of rates, these hidden fees,
these other deceptive methods, including unannounced attempts at repossession for
(33:10):
missing a payment, or places where the given franchise or
business purposely ignored a payment that was made on time.
They all say the same thing, and they all say
the same thing because they're right. The industry is targeting
the poor. It's perfect plan. If you're not worried about ethics.
If you just like to make money off of other people,
(33:33):
then you'll notice that the people who can't afford to
buy a sofa are also the people who probably cannot
afford to financial lawsuit. Judges agree. There are a lot
of successful lawsuits against rt O businesses in all sorts
of states. In a few states good news, they've led
to changes in laws, such as Minnesota, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.
(33:54):
I mean, heck, middle class people can't afford to finance
a lawsuit because you don't know how it's going to
drag on for you know, It's like I just had
a thing where my property manager from the last house
that I rented, one of those kind of you know,
big conglomo type ones, they decided in their infinite wisdom
not to return my security deposit for me, even though
(34:15):
I had done everything I was supposed to do, and
it's it was five bucks because I got a move
in special. Am I gonna sue them over five bucks? No?
And they're banking on that, And I bet they do
this nine times out of ten, not give people their
security deposit back knowing that the amount in question isn't
(34:37):
going to be worth anybody's time to to actually take
them to court. So these are consumer groups fighting the
good fight. These are businesses that, for their side, will
simply say they're satisfying a need in a market and
will quickly point out that they are not in fact
breaking laws. That is true. But wouldever you hear about
(35:00):
something that seems off or unethical and is also at
the same time legal. It's honestly time, and this is
just a personal opinion, it's honestly time to ask about
the authorship of those laws. Taking a break for word
from the sponsors, will return to ask whether or not
(35:20):
these businesses are setting customers up to fail. The answer
is yes. Uh, it seems it seems that these businesses
are indeed to some degree, building the idea of defaulting
on contracts into the business model. This doesn't happen, you know,
(35:44):
in the days of radio rental in the United Kingdom,
things weren't as dark, things weren't as predatory. Uh. So
it's time to ask why they took such a dark
turn in the United States. Was it a matter of
something getting lost in translation? Uh? There's an interesting theory
in the research. Yeah, I mean again, this was sort
(36:08):
of before the advent of credit cards and uh even
credit report well, credit reporting bureaus sort of sprung up
more locally where things were done kind of on a
case by case basis, and there wasn't like a national
database for it. And then I think around nineteen twelve
there became sort of an association of credit reporting bureaus
(36:30):
and a standard for like collecting this kind of information. Um.
But at this point it wasn't quite as like codified.
It didn't really the Vico credit score really didn't start
until night the seventies. So like this, there they were
filling a need for a thing that would ultimately fill
that need later, but at that point didn't exist. And
(36:52):
when when credit cards start to become a mainstream thing
in the United States, especially around the ES, anyone with
a card in this new economy could purchase a dining
room set or a television or whatever that cardholder desired
without having cash on hand. Though yes, as student listeners,
(37:14):
they would go on to regret it in many cases.
There's a guy named Ernie Smith who as this blog
that is well worth the read. UH. Smith puts it
this way. Quote in the nineteen eighties, when rental own
places started to blossom and so Smith asked how they
handled this dichotomy. The answers Marcavellian level. Simple. They started
(37:40):
targeting certain demographics people without credit, people with bad credit.
Those folks need refrigerators, those folks need places to set
just as well. And so places like rent a Center
charge of premium for taking on financial risk. Understandable your
banks do that to your lending institutions. You know, it's
(38:01):
how the game is played, to the point where some
people ask, why not play a different game? And this
is this is, to your point, Noel, quite similar to
the dangerous pay day loan model. It's fair to ask
whether people are being set up to fail. Would like
to draw everyone's attention to some excellent work by a
journalist named Jim Dwyer writing for the New York Times.
(38:24):
Uh Dwyer rate made this great article looking at rent
a Center in particular. This was out in two thousand
eight title for just a few dollars, more big TV
and years of debt in Dwyer finds some pretty alarming examples.
One one case was a forty inch Bravia television forty
(38:47):
seven dollars and fifty one cents a week hundred and
seventeen weeks, then the customer would own the set out right.
Just for some quick math there, that's paying five thousand,
five d fifty eight dollars for that television. That would
be an interest rate is seventy one, and that would
be illegal if it were alone. But it's not coming
(39:09):
out of your monthly paycheck. That's twos. And just to
sew up with why I was saying, uh emphasis here
um is ours, not his. In all other particulars, it
is much like a subprime mortgage for pullout sofas and
television sets. It's an accurate comparison. Well, and there there
are laws in place surrounding actual loans and what interest
(39:33):
rates are allowed to be. But this is like loopholing
its way out of that whole you know calculation. Yeah,
So in the end, I guess guys, ultimately these places
just take the goods back from you if you can't pay, right,
Is there something else going on? What a fantastic setup, Yeah,
thank you. What happens when people can't pay It gets nasty,
(39:57):
way more nasty than you might one might reasonably assume.
I'd like to introduce the National Consumer Law Center, a
boring name, but they're doing good work. In twenty nineteen,
they came out with a report that's freely available online,
more than worth the read, especially if you find yourself
(40:18):
in some sort of good mood. It's called the rent
to own racket, using criminal courts to coerce payments from
vulnerable families. Uh. They found that every state in the
United States except for three, has a law that can
be used to criminalize the failure to return rental property,
(40:38):
which makes sense in terms of like renting a U haul.
Let's say, right, and then I don't return the U haul.
I have stolen that truck, but I'm not renting that
U haul with any sense that it's my property, even temporarily,
Like I I know the deal and it's going to
be for a couple of days and then it goes back.
(41:00):
And but if I just went nuts and went on
the lamb and a U haul, I would fully expect
to be put in jail for stealing a truck right
as a question of criminal intent. And this is where
is where things. This is the fulcrum upon which this
stuff hinges. Vulnerable families and type budgets already can't buy
this stuff outright, would already not be able to take
(41:22):
out a personal loan from a bank in many cases,
and are much more vulnerable to compounding misfortunes loss of income,
rent increase, which a lot of people in the audience
of encountered today, accidents or illness one of the leading
causes of bankruptcy in the United States, divorce right or
(41:43):
family member needs your help. This all adds up, and
of course there's very little assistance in this regard. So
what if you have already already This episode has established
that customers are off to paying thousands more than the
actual product is worth. So they're in cases where they
(42:06):
have a TV that could be purchased somewhere for like
five hundred bucks. They've already paid bucks, but they haven't
paid off their contract, and so they can't make good
on that contract. Now their television is getting taken back,
They're not getting any money. They may be taken to
criminal court. We're not talking about a few people, They're
(42:28):
about four point eight million US households that are annual
rent own customers. You can I just add back to
what you were saying about the vulnerability of these families
and the potential for an accident on economic misfortune. A
lot of these folks are like families literally like it's
like grandmothers and grandparents living in house in small situations
(42:52):
perhaps where it's everything is quite hand to mouth, and
a lot of that is going into taking care of
an elderly parent. So if that and I wouldn't be
surprised if it did entered into that calculation, those odds
of those bad things happening go up. Just the probability
if you have an older person in the home, chances
are they could fall ill and then all of a sudden,
(43:13):
Oh no, I've got to use the money I was
gonna I was paying rent a center for my TV
to now make sure grandma doesn't die. Sorry, bubbala, Uh,
we need to make good on the l c D.
So just pray harder as brutal as that sounds, and
most people, being decent human beings, are going to choose
(43:35):
human lives over making a monthly payment on an over
priced TV. Nearly four and five rent own customers earned
less than forty dollars annually. There is intergenerational discrimination of play.
Three in five of the families or customers are uh
would would be self identified racial or ethnic minorities, and
(43:59):
I wonder or how much of this predatory activity could
be targeted at people who maybe don't speak English as
a first language. Right, So like if if maybe I'm
thinking about the Buford Highway area where I'm from, like
maybe you could target at Spanish families that don't understand
the contract that they're getting into because it's written in
(44:20):
a language may perhaps that they don't speak. I'm not
saying that would be the same, you know, I'm not
seeing it that way every time, or maybe is that
way at all, but perhaps there would be a way
to take further advantage of people use that language barrier. Um.
I don't think there's any any question that that's going on.
I feel like you could even use not necessarily an
(44:40):
education barrier, but just someone who's not accustomed to reading
a long contract that's you know, the kind of labrantine
um just hiding stuff in there. Even the types of
loans that are relatively quote unquote above board, you know,
for folks who are relatively savvy and have good credit scores,
even those are tricksy in these same kinds of ways,
(45:03):
you know what I mean. Where it's like you know,
I've I've told the story before where I got a
you know, in house loan to buy a car, and
they gave me the interest rate and I was like,
I looked up my credit report and I shouldn't be
paying this high of a interest rate. Like, oh well,
if you had told us you wanted to pay a
lower interest rate, we would Again, I'm like, what what
(45:23):
are you talking about? You're like doing like your gas
lighting me right now, lockamolely upon request the one last
quote to pull here without getting too far in the
weeds quote, the industry, through industry friendly legislation, has largely
succeeded in maneuvering its contracts out of the range of
(45:45):
most federal and state consumer protection laws. For the group
to unpack that one, this report argues with validation. We
looked it up and confirmed it that rent own industry
is often writing the laws that are meant to regulate it.
(46:08):
The watchman are watching the watchman, you know, or the
excuse me, the foxes are watching the henhouse, although that
may be a dated reference. Apologies. Uh. It conspires to
target low income folks while at the same time conspiring
throughout fits like ALEC American Legislative Exchange to right laws
(46:29):
that remove commonplace reasonable protection, compounding with the high pressure
tactics they're used to cow people into agreeing unknowingly, often
with horrific loan terms. When they can't pay, they get
dragged the criminal court. This is ruined innocent lives. Can
you clarify to me like it isn't alone? Which is
(46:53):
why it's allowed to exist. It's that loophole we've been
talking about. They're not dragging them the criminal court because
they have kept the pro pretty. They're dragging them because
they've defaulted on the terms of the agreement. Right, So
it would technically be often considered like a lease, a
lease that's a sweetheart deal for the industry. The laws
(47:16):
in many states have made no real distinction between a
criminal intent to your you all example, noel uh someone
says uh. Someone says they are purposely renting a U
haul to steal it for a bank heist, right, and
then abandon it. That's criminal intent or an honest hardship
(47:38):
falling behind on a payment, or worse yet, the nastiest
part bad faith move on the r t O company,
the rental own company is saying, let's be purposely incompetent
let's not acknowledge that a payment has been made. It
gets into debt collector tactics, you know, harassing people, showing
(48:00):
up at their house, loan sharks, thing in front of
your kids, loan sharks. Stuff. Life in the US honestly
just seems harder and harder for many people each year,
and due to these honest to god legislative conspiracies, the
problem seems set to continue. There's a good argument to
be made, primarily speculative, that this is part of a
(48:23):
larger paradigm shift away from an ownership society to a
service society. It's it's moving. All things are moving in
that direction, streaming, you know, subscription based things. There's like,
you know, companies where you can rent clothes to try
them out or whatever at a higher and you know,
(48:43):
and there's there's all kinds of versions of it that
seem like they're utilitarian and in some way, but ultimately
it's just removing actual ownership of stuff from anybody, even
the higher you know, income people. Pretty soon it'll be
American homes for rent and errands present, the American furnished
(49:06):
three bedroom, two bathroom, American dream or you know, whatever
it is. So it's just like the rental companies that
we're talking about in these previous episodes. Along with the
other episode we're gonna make out of this rent to
own houses. Um it is. It feels like the future,
these massive corporations that don't want you to own anything whatsoever. Yeah,
(49:28):
and the notes for this episode. There are examples like
DLC for cars, non game nerds, DLC is shorthand for
downloadable content. It was a recent, recent, hilariously so realistic
thing with BMW which started sully subscriptions for heated seats
for eighteen dollars a month. The thing is the people
(49:51):
targeted for these subscriptions their demographic. They were BMW owners
who had already purchased the BMW, which already had had
the capability to heat the seats, were paying to turn
on a function that already existed. Another example would be
one of the first books pulled from Kendall's subscriptions or Purchases,
(50:12):
No Kidding, True Story, George Orwell's or like, you know,
you might get a car that's serious XM radio capable,
but they might give you a deal where you get
it free for a couple of months, but then you
have to pay for that subscription and that's, you know,
part of it. Um. We mentioned a little bit at
the top of the show how phones work now, um,
(50:34):
even with people with like really good credit scores, and
like it's it's also obscured, like what is the phone
actually worth? How much am I paying for it in
the long term? And like I had a thing where
I was paying that fee still even though I had
already paid off the phone. But I was supposed to
know that I had and then go back to eight
(50:56):
C and C and say do a thing. There was
some step that I missed. Otherwise they just were taking
my money. And then where does that go? And they
said it goes into the abyss. They didn't say that,
but that's essentially what it amounted to. There was no
well yeah, but there's no like, oh, well put it
towards the net. Nope, that that might You were supposed
(51:17):
to do a thing and you didn't do it. Bizarre.
If I could have one last little thing, we've talked
about the concept of sesame credit and how you you know,
are given this credit score that allows you to do
certain things or not do certain things. I would argue
that credit in America is not that much different because
(51:37):
in order to do certain things, you have to have
money and you have to be able to get approved
for things. So even though we're burying it in like
approvals and credit score and all that, it's not that
much different than saying, oh, your sesame credit score is
too low, you can't get this flight. Well, if your
actual credit score is low here, you can't get the
flight either because you don't have the money. On on
(51:58):
the Sesame credit episode years back. Yeah, it's a glasshouse situation.
And with that, hope you enjoyed today's episode. Though enjoy
is a tricky word here. Unfortunately, there are many people
listening today, fellow listeners who have personally experienced this. Would
love to hear your stories. Would love to hear what
you think. Is this a case of caveat and tour
(52:21):
buyer beware? Is this a case of businesses using existing
power to further suppress the future of people who are
not as wealthy. Would love to hear thoughts. Try to
be easy to find online. It's sure you can find
us all over the internet. We're on Facebook where we
(52:42):
have a group called Here's where it Gets Crazy, Twitter
and YouTube at the handle conspiracy Stuff on Instagram or
conspiracy Stuff show. Hey, we have a phone number. Do
you want to call us? The number is one eight
three three std w y t K. It is a
voicemail system. You will hear Ben's voice than a beat.
Then please give yourself a cool nickname and you've got
(53:04):
three minutes. Say whatever you'd like. Please do let us
know if we can use your voice and message on
the air at some point in that message. If you
don't want to use your phone to call, why not
instead send us an email. We are conspiracy at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want you to Know
(53:39):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. It's a show that you don't
have to uh pay crazy interest for, you know. We
(00:48):
all we ask is that you pay a bit of
the most valuable currency of this time attention. Why are
we talking about payments in installments? It's because today's topic
for plants may sound a little strange for a show
that applies critical thoughts and conspiracies. But as we've established,
all sorts of shenanigans can occur in the strangest, most
(01:11):
ostensibly innocuous places. Uh, Noel, Matt, have either of you
ever ever been in a rent to own store like
a rent a center or an errands? No? But I
always remark about, like what is this, who is it for?
And why is it so big. Yeah, I've been in
(01:33):
a Errands. There was one right down by my old house,
and I went in there early on when I moved
to the Atlanta area, and it was to really look
at prices of things. And I didn't know anything back then,
so I didn't realize that the prices that were represented
in there were actually very different than the prices at
other large retailers. Did you think Errands was just like
(01:55):
a big box store or did you understand? I didn't
know what it was, but I look through and everything
seemed way too expensive for me. Yeah, it's a common Uh,
it's common observation many people throughout the United States. Weirdly enough,
not so much in the United Kingdom. That statement will
make sense later Today the show presents the case of
(02:17):
an industry that just may have weaponized the American dream.
Don't believe that's hyperbolic language either, which should frighten people.
Stuff then, which you know is talking about the rent
to own industry note important housekeeping note, not the rent
to own home industry, where people rent a house from
a landlord, company or individual with the idea of one
(02:40):
day owning it. Uh. That's a separate future episode. This
episode is about a quite common and quite controversial practice
of renting appliances, putting things on take it home kind
of layaway, apply aiances, furniture, video game consoles, you name it.
(03:04):
The show will get into it today. Here are the
facts for these purposes. What does stuff they don't want
you to to know mean when it says rent to own?
Or even in this day and age, um the idea
of you know, owning your phone or like, what is
that you know, payment that's built into your bill that
allows you to get the newest, hottest, most up to
(03:25):
date phone you know, right when you want it, even
if you don't want to pay the full price. And
another think we're gonna talk about is how ultimately irrelevant
at the end of the day the actual price becomes. Yes.
For so, for our purposes today on this episode, rent
to own means entering into a contractual agreement with a
third party. That's you right, You enter an agreement with
(03:47):
that party to take home something. As we mentioned before,
let's say a couch, and then to pay either on
a weekly or monthly basis for that couch. It will
generally be a much smaller pain meant than how much
the couch costs but you're going to be making that
payment for an extended period of time. Yeah, so think
(04:07):
of things like buying a vehicle, buying a house, large
appliances you know, a refrigerator isn't cheap, or furniture a
nice sofa set. This also can include things like student loans,
epic vacations. In the United States, this unfortunately includes life
saving or life breaking medical procedures and so on. The
(04:29):
thing is, the harsh reality is that not everyone can
immediately buy these goods and services with cash upfront. That's
why people take out loans or pay for things in
installment plans, lay away at old school brick and mortar stores,
or most commonly for people, paying off a phone as
part of one's monthly bill. When this all works out,
(04:51):
it's a win win for stakeholders. People are able to
acquire their stuff, manufacturers sell their stuff. Banks make money
all the time off the interests. That's accepted as normal.
The concept of rent to own takes it a step
further into all sorts of products and honestly, fellow conspiracy realists,
(05:12):
for many people, this is the only viable way to
make necessary purchases. Let's not make the mistake of vilifying
the poor, as convenient as it may be for all
sorts of bad faith actors, these are not luxurious things.
There's not avocado, toast, etcetera. One would argue this is
(05:33):
stuff that people need to survive, but it's not free.
The rent to own outfits are taking on risks, so
they always tack on a higher interest rate per month.
Big question, how did this become a thing? Because I
got to guarantee you not to inject personal opinion in here.
(05:54):
Most things that seem sketchy are older than they seem
as well. Yeah, um so. Historians usually trace the concept
of the rent to own industry back to the early
twentie century in the United Kingdom, uh to two people
Percy Pairing's Tom's and another gentleman in Austrian businessman named
(06:16):
Jules Thorne uh and the first rent to own establishment
brick and mortar kind of storefront radio rentals. Well, also
that term in the UK, I believe ultimately became like
a that's crazy. Uh, that's that that's radio rental and um,
(06:36):
I think that's probably a reference to like who would
be crazy enough to do one of these things? I'm
just speculating here, but we're gonna get to that. That
came in nineteen thirty. Um because of Percy Pairing's Tom's
um who was from Brighton. He was a radio dealer
who thought that, you know, with the advent of radio
and it being the hot thing and keeping up with
(06:57):
the jones is mentality and all, he thought that people
were going to be really really you know, um desperate
to get a radio, you know, so they wouldn't feel
left out of the conversation. I mean, there was so
much culture happening on the radio, and you didn't have one,
then you weren't. You kind of almost felt like a
second class citizen. So um, he took advantage of that,
let's say, insecurity from some folks that maybe couldn't afford it. Um,
(07:20):
instead of a situation where you could rent radios to consumers,
rather than having them purchased them with cash on the
barrelhead as it were. It is very interesting when you
look at today's rent a centerville or whatever you want
to call this thing, the industry of renting goods, because
that's translated from radios to television's. Televisions are one of
(07:41):
the most rented things from these rent rental centers. I
guess we call them. I know. I only know that
because there's a place called rent a Center, which is
interesting to considering how much cheaper televisions have gotten. You know,
it used to be back in the day, to get
the nicest plasma screen or whatever, you'd be spending a
(08:02):
grand or more, you know minimum, But nowadays you can
get it perfectly fine l C D H H D
t V first a couple of hundred bucks. So it
does also imply that people are praying on folks. Uh,
lack of awareness of what else is available in the market. Yeah,
to sew that up real quick, there's another guy in
the story, Jules Thorne. You might not have heard of
(08:24):
Jules Thorne if you were not from the United Kingdom.
In night, this Austrian businessman moved to England, made something
called the Electrical Lamp Service Company, imports lightbulbs and radio components.
Two he gets uh, he starts playing the monopolization game.
(08:45):
He operates his own radio rental shop, Lotus Radio, and
thirty three later he acquires pairing Tom's old business. Uh.
This business model made sense. Everybody wanted a radio, they
wanted to keep up with the Joneses and to keep
up with the news, to have their fingers on the
pulse of the zeitgeist. But of course not everyone can
(09:07):
pony up to become an early adopter. Not everyone has
the cash to buy one of these new fangled gadgets
or gizmos all at once. Same with television's UH. When
televisions became mainstream, the rental companies made a killing off
that as well. There's a nineteen sixty two article from
Time magazine which you can find online that shows eighty
(09:31):
percent of British television sets in the early nineteen sixties
were rented. Less than one percent of US televisions were UH,
and the ones in the US that were rented were
mostly rented by hotels. You can find vintage advertisements from
London in particular that show the the appeal of this.
(09:55):
They included free service warranties essentially, which are not always
included in the US rent to own debacle that's happening today.
But maybe, uh, maybe it's time talking about how it's
spread across the Atlantic. How did it get from the
UK to the US. I want to just add, you
have a really excellent clipping UM and then the outline
today from one of those ads and it says two
(10:17):
years free service tubes and valves, et cetera. Because you know,
this kind of analog technology ran on these expendable parts
that would not last forever, like a tube or a
valve something. It's like a light bulb essentially, it will
like burn out. And you know, the folks consumers were
not educated and how to repair their own stuff unless
(10:40):
they were tinkerers. Let's just say so, you know, someone
might think, oh, my my TV is completely dead, and
they just wouldn't know that I just need to order
this thing and you literally just pop it in. It's
the easiest thing in the world to do. But they're
capitalizing on that um sort of ignorance as well. It's
really good that you point that out and all, because
that remains and I'm sure we'll get into it a
little further, but that remains as one of the biggest
(11:02):
selling points for for one of these rentals service companies
is that they will service whatever it is that you
per whatever it is you're renting from them, they will
service it free of charge. Anything you need, will take
care of it. For a dishwasher or something that matters.
That's almost the equivalent of having like a landlord that
if your stuff goes out, they're gonna fix it. You're
(11:23):
not gonna be responsible for like figuring that out. So
that could to some people also be appealing, unless they're
one of the large scale financial institutions that are buying
up all the rental property in the United States. But yeah, yeah,
it's true. So the idea hit the United States around
the fifties and sixties when a couple of you know,
(11:45):
American entrepreneurs um pioneered that concept, or at least you
know americanized let's just say Charles louder Milk, and we
used to have a colleague with the last name louder Milk.
I've always loved that name. There's a blues guitarist. I
think also like the named louder Milk. I think it's
very very Nashville, old school country Western kind of vibes.
(12:06):
And uh, this guy, Charles louder Milk, Sr. Was actually
from right here in Atlanta, and I think I'm right here. Um.
He found that a company called Aron Rents, which must
have rebranded to become Errand's Rentals or that place or
just Errands. I think, well, you know, and that makes
sense why you wouldn't have realized it was one of
these rent places or rent a centers. You just thought
(12:28):
it was like a big box, maybe affordable kind of
you know storefront. Yeah. I think I'm just not very
smart guys. I think they're I think okay, I think, well,
if they got you, they definitely probably get others, because
I would argue you're quite savvy and very smart. Um.
And you know, without the word rental or rent a
(12:50):
center type deal in the name, you could easily confuse
it for just a showroom of like fancy home goods.
You know. Hey, speaking of that, there is a place
called rent Center though, and it's been around for a while. Yeah,
we see that around here as well. Um. And even
the logo is very old school looking. Yeah. Aaron Errands,
as it's known today, the Eron's company started out as
(13:13):
Aaron Rents in nineteen fifty five. They had a bunch
of surplus chairs from the U. S. Army. They rented
him out for ten cents a day. Rent rent a
Center is founded by j Arnist Tally, who t A. L. L. E. Y,
who is nowadays largely acknowledged as the father of the
modern uh rent to own industry in the United States,
(13:37):
similar to how Edward Bernes is often called the father
of public relations. Uh, this guy comes out of Kansas.
He has this retail appliance store. And in the nineteen
fifties there was this issue about bank credit. You have
to remember, folks, this is before the dawn of the
credit card economy, and that plays a huge role in
(14:00):
what went wrong here. Uh. Bank credit prevented a lot
of people from walking in and buying an appliance of
some sort. Right, So he said, why don't I rent
it out? And if people can't meet their monthly payment,
I can always this him talking, I can always repossess
the merchandise. When we reached the end of this take
(14:23):
home layaway, which is just a term made up for
this show. It's not something that you'll find in the industry. Uh,
they would own the merchandise. Tolly would have some cool
stuff happening. On the other side, it would have had
guaranteed income monthly, right month over month, And he would
have also been able to look at his spreadsheet and
(14:43):
say that he increased sales or his company did. Observers
are watching this, and just like when Catchup hits the
mainstream in the eighteen hundred's, a lot of other people
get into the game, and that's what leads you here
to this episode. According to the Association and Progressive Rental Organizations,
(15:07):
the size of the rent to own industry as of
twenty fourteen fifteen, those are the most comprehensive numbers now
it tops eight point five billion dollars In the United
States alone, you can see all uh pre pandemic. You
can see almost ten thousand different retailers selling this stuff
(15:30):
throughout Canada, Mexico. In the US, rent A Center alone
is a big player. That's probably two thousand, four hundred stores.
This could be seen as a win win again when
everything's above the board. But today's question what happens when
things aren't above the board? And how come so many
(15:52):
people think this is a hotbed of corruption and indeed conspiracy.
Pausing for a moment or word from the sponsors and
diving in, here's where it gets crazy. It turns out
(16:13):
this industry, as undeniably profitable as it is, has a
ton of critics for several incredibly valid and disturbing reasons.
One of the biggest reasons we've already kind of been
hinting at it's that you're gonna pay a lot more
money in the end if you're renting one of these
goods rather than if you just went out and purchased it.
(16:35):
You're you're going to be paying a much larger price
in the end, and people see that as predatory for sure.
Like you're essentially, as the owner of one of these
stores or as the person is running one of these stores,
you are getting your giving a loan basically out in
the form of a good and then you're just making interest,
(16:58):
like lots and lots of interest in stuff on the
top of somebody who probably can't afford it well. And
I imagine all of that stuff happens in house, Like
it's not like this is being financed through a bank.
You're essentially on the hook like you would be to
a loan shark or something. I mean, not to be
too hyperbolic, but it is a company um that is
not a bank, probably has affiliations with banks and things
(17:19):
like that, But you're you haven't like signed up for
a loan exactly right, Like it's sort of is that,
but it also kind of isn't. Essentially, I guess it's
just kind of a bad loan. I don't know who
writes the laws would be the question. Yeah. The most
telling aspect of the way these stores do business in
the modern day is the pricing. If you have ever
(17:43):
traveled this, this is way more common outside of the
the US and Canada. If you've ever traveled to certain countries,
you'll walk into a store and there's not a price,
and so you want to buy something and you ask
what the prices and they'll say for you x amount
of whatever currency there is. And the understanding here is
(18:05):
that the customer must negotiate. But again that doesn't happen
in the US near as often. In most of these establishments,
the prices are not clearly marked. There are, however, very
well trained associates ready to help you find out prices
(18:25):
in terms of the lease. I would just say some
of that has changed a little bit now that a
lot of these places have moved online. I don't know,
I don't know how much of their business has done
online versus inside the store, but I know they they
have a thing sometimes that I've seen on their websites,
on renaissent or in particular, where you're not exactly sure
how much it costs until you put in some of
(18:46):
your location information, you put in a couple of extra things,
then you can get at least an estimated price on
how much it will cost. But you're right, man, it
is different in that it's it's not so clear, I
don't think, and often it's it's made to look like
there's a sale or something, or it's it's going to
be less now than it would be usually if you
(19:07):
do it right now. That's the illusion of of of
big box kind of stories. Like I used to work
at a music shop when I was younger, and we
would you know, it's kind of an old school, family
owned operation, and we had to price everything with little,
you know, tags with like a piece of string on it.
You'd put around the the tuning key of the guitar
and it would have a price on it, and then
slashed through that price would write this by pen and
(19:29):
then it would have your price, and then they would
give you a better price than even that because they
had just liked the cut of your jib or whatever
it might have been. But the slash through price is
what's called list price, which is the price that nobody pays.
It's sort of this like weird standardizing thing, I guess.
And then the price that's under there would be what
(19:51):
would be retail right, and then even that's too high,
So it gives them room to haggle and give the
illusion of a good deal. And I had to do that,
like I was trained. It made me feel so ichy.
I hated it. Um, but that's their whole business model
kind of. And once the Internet came along, they hated
the Internet, let me tell you, because that gave everyone
(20:11):
kind of level the playing field, right right. Uh. Siloing
information is always one of the go too's of manipulative
entities and bad faith actors. Uh. This stuff regarding the
conversation about how online sales may have changed things also
is doing large parts to something in the US called
(20:32):
the Better Business Bureau. No to your earlier example, an
analog in the world of automotives would be blue Book
Price Kelly's blue Book Price. It is the common go
to of how much a vehicle may or may not
be worth, and nobody pays it. Uh. The other the
(20:52):
next thing in your comparison there would be uh M
s r P manufacturers suggested retail price, which again people
don't often pay. The big insidious psychological aspect at play.
There is something called anchoring. Right, you want somebody to
pay thirty dollars for something that's worth fourteen dollars. You
(21:13):
have a fifty dollar price tag just slashed out arbitrarily,
there's no law against it, and all of a sudden,
thirties starts to look like a good deal, especially when you,
as a bad faith actor, have restricted access to information
showing this stuff is worth fourteen dollars. Those are deceptive
sales practices. Better Business Bureau is mad about it. Failure
(21:36):
to disclose interest rates. That's another thing they're mad about.
Legally speaking, if you find yourself in a position where
you feel you need to go to one of these
companies and they are all operating legally, they're not breaking
the law. They are required to tell you if you ask.
(21:57):
It's another thing this show in the asked is called
the guacamole rule. It's available upon request. Uh. And interest rate.
I'm got to tell you that we're required by law,
as a Chipotle employed, to tell you that guacamole is extra. Uh.
These interest rates can be what is often called you serious,
(22:19):
which means predatory. Uh. In In this sense, interest rates
can be up to or even higher, and they're often
in effect when do this rent to own option because
it's technically not alone, so it doesn't trip the flags
that various states have about you sious or predatory loans. Instead,
(22:43):
it's a lease. The product can be returned at any
time during that least term. You as the consumer will
not get your money back. You overpaid for a television,
You've paid twice what the TV is worth. You just
want to bring it back and get out of this
uh terrible con Then you absolutely are free to do so,
(23:04):
as long as it's a working order. There will probably
be some fees involved because you know the company is
working to maximize the amount of uh, your money it
can take. So why do people consider it predatory? It's
a good question. And also by that point, they've probably
restocked that TV. I bet stores like this only keep
(23:25):
a certain amount of inventory where it's not like a
big box store where they have like a whole warehouse
full of the things. They probably just have a couple
and then they're banking on that one being out of
the store for a long term situation, and then they
just restocked that one item. Every time it goes they
probably just restock it again. Well, you know, there's an
interesting idea there. No, because it's worth asking the question. Many,
(23:48):
many big box stores, regardless of what they're selling, use
something called it just in time supply chain, and that
really the hammer hit the nail, uh during the pay endemic,
when supply chains were collapsing, and all of a sudden,
a lot of US residents who had never had this
experience before would go to a place. They'd see that
(24:10):
the prices hadn't just risen. Consumers simply could not buy
the stuff there. It wasn't there on the shelves. And
it went way beyond toilet paper and hand sanitizers, switch
or the PlayStation five. Perhaps, Uh, stay tuned, Maybe there's
an episode about semi conductors in Taiwan in the future.
In the meantime, here are some numbers from a great,
(24:34):
a great piece written by Matt Breed, one for an
outfit called money Crashers, and it hits on something very important. Uh,
fellow conspiracy realist, fellow listeners, hope you clocked this. So
twenty twenty one, not all that long ago. Uh, Matt
Breed went in and checked out these places the same
(24:58):
way someone might accidentally walk to a store because you
don't know it's trying to rip you off. H Breed
found that a forty l c D TV was priced
two ways. You could buy it right now, take it
home that day for the low low price of one thousand,
one hundred dollars and cents not counting tax. Or you
(25:24):
could rent to own it, and if you're on time,
that price at a six interest rate would work out
to one thousand, nine nine dollars and seventy six cents.
Here's the kicker, and thanks for this, Matt Breed. The
lowest price for the same product if you had the
wherewithal to check into it four hundred dollars. But even
(25:48):
then this is based on maybe someone doesn't have four
hundred Maybe they know about the cheaper product and they
know it's good or just as good, but they don't
have five hundred bucks, and they don't have enough credit
to get a decent term credit card to buy that
that TV for five bucks, or to even just get
(26:08):
financing with the store right wherever you would buy it. Yeah,
this episode gets gets to this too, and these are
quite disturbing things to your earlier question regarding supply chainnel
It's interesting that if you're selling a five hundred dollar
television for two thousand dollars, then you can already pay
(26:30):
you know, more than three times over more than treble
what what you know? You can buy three more TVs
a minimum. That's just that's just lazy cocktail maths subtracting
for overhead. You see it again with refrigerators. Actually, one
of the best deals Matt Breed found was an Xbox.
But it may be helpful for our fellow listeners to
(26:53):
walk through just a couple more examples of how egregious
this is? Can I give you one? I found a
Errands just I wanted to find, like right now, how
much something would cost? Like do do do this exact
thing that Matt Breed did, but with with Errands, just
because I wanted to see just a year later, by
the way, yeah, one year later. So you guys, how
much do you think it would cost to go out
(27:14):
and buy a Nintendo switch right now? Like right now?
Three bucks? Right almost exactly, three hundred dollars for just
the base set. Right if you go over to Errands,
you can get it right now. They'll deliver it to
you for free. They will service it for you as
long as you've got it, and all you have to
do is make twelve easy payments of But the big
(27:38):
kicker there, and the reason why people do it, I think,
is because Errands offers a one time fee of five
dollars to get it shipped to you and get the
process started. I think I think that might be the
kicker guys, because it's like, here's five dollars, I'll get
it right now, and then I have to make my
payment at some point, you know, this month or twelve payments,
(28:04):
twelve payments of eighty dollars. That's almost a thousand dollars
for the switch. It is nine hundred and fifty nine
eight cents in total if you went the whole twelve months,
which it's just crazy to me, it's three times the
price of the actual product. Yeah, and the video game
consoles are less profitable overall than things like a refrigerator,
(28:28):
for instance, a twenty three cubic foot refrigerator. That's one
penny under fift bucks to buy it now six interest.
That's a little less than two thousand, four hundred for
the same thing. Lowest price if you go almost anywhere
else seven hundred bucks money hand over fist, dude, but
like that was well you just said, Matt though, was
(28:50):
like way worse than this. It was like six hundred
extra bucks on top of the basic price of the switch.
And the question then becomes, like, what's the monthly aiment?
And do they assess that based on how bad your
credit score is? And can they jerk you around even
with that to make it a little better for them
(29:10):
a little sweeter? No? Yeah, I mean I I don't
know the specifics of Like I haven't actually gone in
and tried to enter into an agreement, and honestly, I
don't think I would even even if it was just
fact finding, just because I'm scared. It scares me. Uh,
some of I would want an attorney present. I think
it's mafia type practices. It really is. It's like a
what do they call that bust out? Like when when
(29:31):
the mafia like takes over someone, Like in The Sopranos,
they take over this guy's sporting goods business and they
just bleed him dry by like taking his inventory and
selling it in Times Square and then taking out loans
in his name. And they don't do it all in
one go, They just do it over time, until he's
just gotten nothing left. Then I want to get the
point you made earlier, which was about you know, it's
(29:53):
some of these things are uh necessary to live, right
And if you think about a refrigerator, people need to
have cold food, and especially if you're on a budget
and you need to save money, you need to have
a place to keep your food cold to serve it
to your family or even to yourself. Right. Well, Similarly,
washers and dryers are a very common good that are
(30:13):
rented from these places, and I found a similar thing
at Renaissenter. You guys, it was to own it over
the course of a hundred and twenty payments, one payment
per week. It would costs to get this pretty standard
washer and dryer a week. Though that's interesting, like, yes,
(30:34):
it was a week pay in any other you know,
professional loan arrangement. Never that sounds like our rent by
the hour hotel or something like. It's very I mean,
I'm just saying it's it's odd because it's thirty five
dollars a week, thirty ninety nine a week to have
this washer and dryer in your house, and you can
have it for a hundred and twenty weeks after that
(30:56):
you own it, and if you work that math out,
it is five thousand, two hundred and seventy eight dollars
and eighty cents. And if you go to the Whirlpool website,
the manufacturer of that object, and we're talking about the
M s RP for both of those things, that cost
so again you could see the common pattern here, fellow listeners. Uh,
(31:18):
to not miss uh, the point we're attempting to establish
there with the video game consoles and Xbox three sixty
Halo Bundle for the discriminating customer is sold by these
kind of places for six thirty bucks. Rent to own
is little under eight hundred and forty dollars. That's thirty
(31:40):
three percent interest was that which is actually a better
deal than these appliances. Lowest price, uh, fellow game enthusiasts
will know at that time was about four hundred dollars.
You know, that's really interesting that it's a an Xbox
three sixty for that price for and to get it
for that much, it would cost that much because that's
(32:03):
last year, and I'm pretty sure the X series or
the Xbox X series came out, and before that, the
Xbox One came out. So I wonder, like, I wonder
why places even offering an Xbox three sixty as a
standard rental. Or maybe they just have so much inventory
of those they can get away with renting a bunch
of them out and they're making just a ton of
(32:24):
money back. I guess yeah, an Xbox right now on
Amazon is a hundred and fifteen bucks and it's refurbished. Weird.
You might not be surprised to learn that there are
lawsuits that become part of this. Tons of consumer advocate
organizations have combated the deceptive, misleading, and again not to
(32:46):
overuse the word just to accurately describe it predatory practices
used by the r T O rent to own industry. Uh.
A lot of these campaigns are seeking better state legislation. Uh,
there's talking about this obstucation of rates, these hidden fees,
these other deceptive methods, including unannounced attempts at repossession for
(33:10):
missing a payment, or places where the given franchise or
business purposely ignored a payment that was made on time.
They all say the same thing, and they all say
the same thing because they're right. The industry is targeting
the poor. It's perfect plan. If you're not worried about ethics.
If you just like to make money off of other people,
(33:33):
then you'll notice that the people who can't afford to
buy a sofa are also the people who probably cannot
afford to financial lawsuit. Judges agree. There are a lot
of successful lawsuits against rt O businesses in all sorts
of states. In a few states good news, they've led
to changes in laws, such as Minnesota, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.
(33:54):
I mean, heck, middle class people can't afford to finance
a lawsuit because you don't know how it's going to
drag on for you know, It's like I just had
a thing where my property manager from the last house
that I rented, one of those kind of you know,
big conglomo type ones, they decided in their infinite wisdom
not to return my security deposit for me, even though
(34:15):
I had done everything I was supposed to do, and
it's it was five bucks because I got a move
in special. Am I gonna sue them over five bucks? No?
And they're banking on that, And I bet they do
this nine times out of ten, not give people their
security deposit back knowing that the amount in question isn't
(34:37):
going to be worth anybody's time to to actually take
them to court. So these are consumer groups fighting the
good fight. These are businesses that, for their side, will
simply say they're satisfying a need in a market and
will quickly point out that they are not in fact
breaking laws. That is true. But wouldever you hear about
(35:00):
something that seems off or unethical and is also at
the same time legal. It's honestly time, and this is
just a personal opinion, it's honestly time to ask about
the authorship of those laws. Taking a break for word
from the sponsors, will return to ask whether or not
(35:20):
these businesses are setting customers up to fail. The answer
is yes. Uh, it seems it seems that these businesses
are indeed to some degree, building the idea of defaulting
on contracts into the business model. This doesn't happen, you know,
(35:44):
in the days of radio rental in the United Kingdom,
things weren't as dark, things weren't as predatory. Uh. So
it's time to ask why they took such a dark
turn in the United States. Was it a matter of
something getting lost in translation? Uh? There's an interesting theory
in the research. Yeah, I mean again, this was sort
(36:08):
of before the advent of credit cards and uh even
credit report well, credit reporting bureaus sort of sprung up
more locally where things were done kind of on a
case by case basis, and there wasn't like a national
database for it. And then I think around nineteen twelve
there became sort of an association of credit reporting bureaus
(36:30):
and a standard for like collecting this kind of information. Um.
But at this point it wasn't quite as like codified.
It didn't really the Vico credit score really didn't start
until night the seventies. So like this, there they were
filling a need for a thing that would ultimately fill
that need later, but at that point didn't exist. And
(36:52):
when when credit cards start to become a mainstream thing
in the United States, especially around the ES, anyone with
a card in this new economy could purchase a dining
room set or a television or whatever that cardholder desired
without having cash on hand. Though yes, as student listeners,
(37:14):
they would go on to regret it in many cases.
There's a guy named Ernie Smith who as this blog
that is well worth the read. UH. Smith puts it
this way. Quote in the nineteen eighties, when rental own
places started to blossom and so Smith asked how they
handled this dichotomy. The answers Marcavellian level. Simple. They started
(37:40):
targeting certain demographics people without credit, people with bad credit.
Those folks need refrigerators, those folks need places to set
just as well. And so places like rent a Center
charge of premium for taking on financial risk. Understandable your
banks do that to your lending institutions. You know, it's
(38:01):
how the game is played, to the point where some
people ask, why not play a different game? And this
is this is, to your point, Noel, quite similar to
the dangerous pay day loan model. It's fair to ask
whether people are being set up to fail. Would like
to draw everyone's attention to some excellent work by a
journalist named Jim Dwyer writing for the New York Times.
(38:24):
Uh Dwyer rate made this great article looking at rent
a Center in particular. This was out in two thousand
eight title for just a few dollars, more big TV
and years of debt in Dwyer finds some pretty alarming examples.
One one case was a forty inch Bravia television forty
(38:47):
seven dollars and fifty one cents a week hundred and
seventeen weeks, then the customer would own the set out right.
Just for some quick math there, that's paying five thousand,
five d fifty eight dollars for that television. That would
be an interest rate is seventy one, and that would
be illegal if it were alone. But it's not coming
(39:09):
out of your monthly paycheck. That's twos. And just to
sew up with why I was saying, uh emphasis here
um is ours, not his. In all other particulars, it
is much like a subprime mortgage for pullout sofas and
television sets. It's an accurate comparison. Well, and there there
are laws in place surrounding actual loans and what interest
(39:33):
rates are allowed to be. But this is like loopholing
its way out of that whole you know calculation. Yeah,
So in the end, I guess guys, ultimately these places
just take the goods back from you if you can't pay, right,
Is there something else going on? What a fantastic setup, Yeah,
thank you. What happens when people can't pay It gets nasty,
(39:57):
way more nasty than you might one might reasonably assume.
I'd like to introduce the National Consumer Law Center, a
boring name, but they're doing good work. In twenty nineteen,
they came out with a report that's freely available online,
more than worth the read, especially if you find yourself
(40:18):
in some sort of good mood. It's called the rent
to own racket, using criminal courts to coerce payments from
vulnerable families. Uh. They found that every state in the
United States except for three, has a law that can
be used to criminalize the failure to return rental property,
(40:38):
which makes sense in terms of like renting a U haul.
Let's say, right, and then I don't return the U haul.
I have stolen that truck, but I'm not renting that
U haul with any sense that it's my property, even temporarily,
Like I I know the deal and it's going to
be for a couple of days and then it goes back.
(41:00):
And but if I just went nuts and went on
the lamb and a U haul, I would fully expect
to be put in jail for stealing a truck right
as a question of criminal intent. And this is where
is where things. This is the fulcrum upon which this
stuff hinges. Vulnerable families and type budgets already can't buy
this stuff outright, would already not be able to take
(41:22):
out a personal loan from a bank in many cases,
and are much more vulnerable to compounding misfortunes loss of income,
rent increase, which a lot of people in the audience
of encountered today, accidents or illness one of the leading
causes of bankruptcy in the United States, divorce right or
(41:43):
family member needs your help. This all adds up, and
of course there's very little assistance in this regard. So
what if you have already already This episode has established
that customers are off to paying thousands more than the
actual product is worth. So they're in cases where they
(42:06):
have a TV that could be purchased somewhere for like
five hundred bucks. They've already paid bucks, but they haven't
paid off their contract, and so they can't make good
on that contract. Now their television is getting taken back,
They're not getting any money. They may be taken to
criminal court. We're not talking about a few people, They're
(42:28):
about four point eight million US households that are annual
rent own customers. You can I just add back to
what you were saying about the vulnerability of these families
and the potential for an accident on economic misfortune. A
lot of these folks are like families literally like it's
like grandmothers and grandparents living in house in small situations
(42:52):
perhaps where it's everything is quite hand to mouth, and
a lot of that is going into taking care of
an elderly parent. So if that and I wouldn't be
surprised if it did entered into that calculation, those odds
of those bad things happening go up. Just the probability
if you have an older person in the home, chances
are they could fall ill and then all of a sudden,
(43:13):
Oh no, I've got to use the money I was
gonna I was paying rent a center for my TV
to now make sure grandma doesn't die. Sorry, bubbala, Uh,
we need to make good on the l c D.
So just pray harder as brutal as that sounds, and
most people, being decent human beings, are going to choose
(43:35):
human lives over making a monthly payment on an over
priced TV. Nearly four and five rent own customers earned
less than forty dollars annually. There is intergenerational discrimination of play.
Three in five of the families or customers are uh
would would be self identified racial or ethnic minorities, and
(43:59):
I wonder or how much of this predatory activity could
be targeted at people who maybe don't speak English as
a first language. Right, So like if if maybe I'm
thinking about the Buford Highway area where I'm from, like
maybe you could target at Spanish families that don't understand
the contract that they're getting into because it's written in
(44:20):
a language may perhaps that they don't speak. I'm not
saying that would be the same, you know, I'm not
seeing it that way every time, or maybe is that
way at all, but perhaps there would be a way
to take further advantage of people use that language barrier. Um.
I don't think there's any any question that that's going on.
I feel like you could even use not necessarily an
(44:40):
education barrier, but just someone who's not accustomed to reading
a long contract that's you know, the kind of labrantine
um just hiding stuff in there. Even the types of
loans that are relatively quote unquote above board, you know,
for folks who are relatively savvy and have good credit scores,
even those are tricksy in these same kinds of ways,
(45:03):
you know what I mean. Where it's like you know,
I've I've told the story before where I got a
you know, in house loan to buy a car, and
they gave me the interest rate and I was like,
I looked up my credit report and I shouldn't be
paying this high of a interest rate. Like, oh well,
if you had told us you wanted to pay a
lower interest rate, we would Again, I'm like, what what
(45:23):
are you talking about? You're like doing like your gas
lighting me right now, lockamolely upon request the one last
quote to pull here without getting too far in the
weeds quote, the industry, through industry friendly legislation, has largely
succeeded in maneuvering its contracts out of the range of
(45:45):
most federal and state consumer protection laws. For the group
to unpack that one, this report argues with validation. We
looked it up and confirmed it that rent own industry
is often writing the laws that are meant to regulate it.
(46:08):
The watchman are watching the watchman, you know, or the
excuse me, the foxes are watching the henhouse, although that
may be a dated reference. Apologies. Uh. It conspires to
target low income folks while at the same time conspiring
throughout fits like ALEC American Legislative Exchange to right laws
(46:29):
that remove commonplace reasonable protection, compounding with the high pressure
tactics they're used to cow people into agreeing unknowingly, often
with horrific loan terms. When they can't pay, they get
dragged the criminal court. This is ruined innocent lives. Can
you clarify to me like it isn't alone? Which is
(46:53):
why it's allowed to exist. It's that loophole we've been
talking about. They're not dragging them the criminal court because
they have kept the pro pretty. They're dragging them because
they've defaulted on the terms of the agreement. Right, So
it would technically be often considered like a lease, a
lease that's a sweetheart deal for the industry. The laws
(47:16):
in many states have made no real distinction between a
criminal intent to your you all example, noel uh someone
says uh. Someone says they are purposely renting a U
haul to steal it for a bank heist, right, and
then abandon it. That's criminal intent or an honest hardship
(47:38):
falling behind on a payment, or worse yet, the nastiest
part bad faith move on the r t O company,
the rental own company is saying, let's be purposely incompetent
let's not acknowledge that a payment has been made. It
gets into debt collector tactics, you know, harassing people, showing
(48:00):
up at their house, loan sharks, thing in front of
your kids, loan sharks. Stuff. Life in the US honestly
just seems harder and harder for many people each year,
and due to these honest to god legislative conspiracies, the
problem seems set to continue. There's a good argument to
be made, primarily speculative, that this is part of a
(48:23):
larger paradigm shift away from an ownership society to a
service society. It's it's moving. All things are moving in
that direction, streaming, you know, subscription based things. There's like,
you know, companies where you can rent clothes to try
them out or whatever at a higher and you know,
(48:43):
and there's there's all kinds of versions of it that
seem like they're utilitarian and in some way, but ultimately
it's just removing actual ownership of stuff from anybody, even
the higher you know, income people. Pretty soon it'll be
American homes for rent and errands present, the American furnished
(49:06):
three bedroom, two bathroom, American dream or you know, whatever
it is. So it's just like the rental companies that
we're talking about in these previous episodes. Along with the
other episode we're gonna make out of this rent to
own houses. Um it is. It feels like the future,
these massive corporations that don't want you to own anything whatsoever. Yeah,
(49:28):
and the notes for this episode. There are examples like
DLC for cars, non game nerds, DLC is shorthand for
downloadable content. It was a recent, recent, hilariously so realistic
thing with BMW which started sully subscriptions for heated seats
for eighteen dollars a month. The thing is the people
(49:51):
targeted for these subscriptions their demographic. They were BMW owners
who had already purchased the BMW, which already had had
the capability to heat the seats, were paying to turn
on a function that already existed. Another example would be
one of the first books pulled from Kendall's subscriptions or Purchases,
(50:12):
No Kidding, True Story, George Orwell's or like, you know,
you might get a car that's serious XM radio capable,
but they might give you a deal where you get
it free for a couple of months, but then you
have to pay for that subscription and that's, you know,
part of it. Um. We mentioned a little bit at
the top of the show how phones work now, um,
(50:34):
even with people with like really good credit scores, and
like it's it's also obscured, like what is the phone
actually worth? How much am I paying for it in
the long term? And like I had a thing where
I was paying that fee still even though I had
already paid off the phone. But I was supposed to
know that I had and then go back to eight
(50:56):
C and C and say do a thing. There was
some step that I missed. Otherwise they just were taking
my money. And then where does that go? And they
said it goes into the abyss. They didn't say that,
but that's essentially what it amounted to. There was no
well yeah, but there's no like, oh, well put it
towards the net. Nope, that that might You were supposed
(51:17):
to do a thing and you didn't do it. Bizarre.
If I could have one last little thing, we've talked
about the concept of sesame credit and how you you know,
are given this credit score that allows you to do
certain things or not do certain things. I would argue
that credit in America is not that much different because
(51:37):
in order to do certain things, you have to have
money and you have to be able to get approved
for things. So even though we're burying it in like
approvals and credit score and all that, it's not that
much different than saying, oh, your sesame credit score is
too low, you can't get this flight. Well, if your
actual credit score is low here, you can't get the
flight either because you don't have the money. On on
(51:58):
the Sesame credit episode years back. Yeah, it's a glasshouse situation.
And with that, hope you enjoyed today's episode. Though enjoy
is a tricky word here. Unfortunately, there are many people
listening today, fellow listeners who have personally experienced this. Would
love to hear your stories. Would love to hear what
you think. Is this a case of caveat and tour
(52:21):
buyer beware? Is this a case of businesses using existing
power to further suppress the future of people who are
not as wealthy. Would love to hear thoughts. Try to
be easy to find online. It's sure you can find
us all over the internet. We're on Facebook where we
(52:42):
have a group called Here's where it Gets Crazy, Twitter
and YouTube at the handle conspiracy Stuff on Instagram or
conspiracy Stuff show. Hey, we have a phone number. Do
you want to call us? The number is one eight
three three std w y t K. It is a
voicemail system. You will hear Ben's voice than a beat.
Then please give yourself a cool nickname and you've got
(53:04):
three minutes. Say whatever you'd like. Please do let us
know if we can use your voice and message on
the air at some point in that message. If you
don't want to use your phone to call, why not
instead send us an email. We are conspiracy at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want you to Know
(53:39):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com