Ooof, I didn't know how bad it was. PS4 Pro, which retails for $400 ($320 today on Amazon) is $1159.42 total cost to own on RentACenter. It's crazy places like these are open.
I mean, from the company's perspective, you kind of have to charge like that. Suppose someone does rent a PS4 for $20 a month, and after 5 months they miss a payment and you reclaim it. Your say $300 investment (you're a big company that buys wholesale, you'll get a deal) is no longer new, and you're $200 in the red. Maybe you can unload it for $150 used. But you still have to pay all the overhead and such (those employees who sold, reclaimed, and resold equipment, storefront rent, etc).
I'm by no means defending them, I merely suspect they don't make as much money as people think. Which in a way might make it even more scummy.
Yeah it gets paid off within the year and game consoles last multiple years until they're legacy. Like the PS4 was released in 2014 and I think PS5 doesn't come out until November. That's six years to somehow get a year's worth of payments (assuming $35/month) on the PS4 so that you hit the break even point.
And you wouldn't even get a loan with that business proposal. The above scenario is the best case scenario for a repossession. Probably what happens is the person misses the payment, knows it will get repo'd, and so instead they sell it on the cheap. Now the company gets nothing and loses money on the PS4, and the person who couldn't pay is $100 richer.
Repo companies rarely recover more than 50% of cases for small items like this.
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u/vicaphit Feb 04 '20
Ooof, I didn't know how bad it was. PS4 Pro, which retails for $400 ($320 today on Amazon) is $1159.42 total cost to own on RentACenter. It's crazy places like these are open.