This will be the first part of an informative "story" that happened to a friend of mine. If any of you should find yourself in the market for a new pc soon, take this story with you in the back of your head. A very close friend of mine decided to hit one of those "rent-to-own" stores for her desktop pc. She made her selection, got home to find that xp was never properly installed. When she called and ask the store about it, she was informed they could "look" at it. Also, informed her they would have to probably send it back to the factory to be "fixed." Instead she called me, I went over and got xp working only to find a small barrage of porn dialers, viri, and the like. Naturally she was horrified, thank god she didn't buy this computer for her kids. Eventually we found out that store "policy" is to re-image the drive between users. However, as you can clearly see this did not happen. Upon completion of getting it running, she informed the store of my "miracle". To which they responded with, "see if he wants a job as a tech making $7/hr." After all this hassle, they finally gave her a major price break. She has been happy with it's performance ever since.
But, two things stick in my mind: one, the fact that this machine was brought into a family home with severe porn infections, unknowingly. The other, is the pricing policy of these stores. I realize that they need to make money, but it would appear they make it at the expense of the customers. That is another issue entirely. And just when you thought it couldn't get any better, stay tuned. I will tell you of the "three ring circus" from when my friend went back to the same store recently for a laptop... Till then update your anti-virus, adaware, spy-bot, windows/os updates, remembering a little work now saves major frustration later...
Till next time
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ReplyDeleteThanks Nate. I look forward to hearing the next chapter of this story.
ReplyDeleteWhen Nate mentioned contributing this story the other night what came to mind was the term "juice loan". If you don't know what juice loan is, it's a loan made by organized crime that carries a very high interest rate.
In effect, rent-to-own, is a very high interest loan aimed at the poor. These are very people who don't have credit and otherwise can't afford what they are renting to own. Rent-to-own is just one more way the working poor are taken advantage of.
For those us not in that positon, it is easy to judge and say "I'd never fall for that", but its not so simple. Imagine that you barely had enough money for food, clothing, and shelter. Imagine that the only way you could afford even a basic computer or a TV was to go the rent-to-own route. Maybe the most resolute of us could do without either, but I sure can't fault a person for feeling they need these things, especially a computer for job training or kid's homework.
On the rent-to-own store side, I realize that in making these "loans" they are assuming a lot of risk. I realize that they need to make enough money to cover their losses, and I'm sure there are losses. However, there is a perception that most of these places are doing more than that -- they are making undue profit on the backs of those least able to afford it. Same goes for the cash loan against a paycheck places who charge very high fees.
So what to do as a community? If we are fortunate enough to upgrade to a new computers while the old one is still usable (that means it is not so old that it can't reasonably run Windows XP these days), donate it to a struggling family you know or to a community agency who will put it into the hands of such a family.
Those who work hard for low wages have enough burdens to bear. High interest loans for computer so that folks can do their homework and build a better life is just plain wrong IMHO.
(BTW, my first version of this comment was removed and reposted to hopefully clean up a few typos -- we can't edit comments)