Why rent to own stores make me mad...

So, we all hear those adds. That promise consumer electronics for "low monthly payments". They sometimes bill themselves as "The new way to buy in the new economy". They are rent to own store. The idea is that you go to the store and bring home a large purchase such as a computer, TV set, kitchen appliances, or a washer/dryer. Then you just make a payment like $99 a month or something and in two or three years you own it. It seems pretty reasonable at first, don't you think?

The problem is I sat down and totalled up the price. You could buy two outright for that. That's right, their rent to own prices tend to double the prices of normal retailers. And this is targeted to low income families already living paycheck to paycheck? Oh, you're poor, we'll charge you two times the price of a higher income family? Moral outrage aside, there are several class action cases in different states about franchise owners illegitimately selling these accounts to collectors and doing things like installing spyware on items like computers where the data wound up in the hands of less that reputable sources, and that's not even touching the lawsuit in Texas where a store turned on a laptop's camera.

I, personally, classify this business model as predatory. The service provided is inferior to other forms of financing, even charging it on a credit card results in far lower prices, even with the risk for long term indebtedness. These stores only exist where poverty does, a clear indication that this model can only exist in a dearth of other options. This annoys me as much as title pawns and check cashing stores do, because those other places can be argued to actually have valid uses in some cases. Rent to own stores have no such excuse. They're preying on people who don't have the ability to build up cash reserves or people who are bad at math to the point where they consider $35 every month for two years a valid offer for a $500 computer.