The laws of many states allow lease companies with option to purchase to take criminal action against customers who miss payments and do not return rents at the company`s request. David Strosnider, a former director of Rent-A-Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, says he filed criminal charges only against customers who paid less than 30 percent of the goods. But some Rent-A-Center managers filed complaints against anyone who didn`t pay, says Strosnider, who worked for Rent-A-Center from 2012 to 2015. Rent-A-Center`s headquarters has given “carte blanche” to companies with failing customers, he says. “Their message was, `Do whatever you need to do to get your money.` In Houston, the Harris County District Attorney has been laying criminal charges of theft against tenants for at least two decades, says Valerie Turner, district director of consumer fraud. Murray Newman, who worked as a Harris County district attorney from 1999 to 2008, says he justified the theft allegations when a customer rented an item, never made a payment and refused to return it. But he said Rent-A-Center didn`t make that distinction. He used prosecutors as a debt collection agency, he said, and prosecuted customers who defaulted on their payments without stealing the intent. Rent-A-Center said in an email that it is punishable in “extremely limited circumstances” and only when the intent to commit theft is obvious. “We try every possible way to contact, visit and work with our customers, and consider filing fees as a last resort,” the company said. After a fixed number of rental payments, ownership of the rented item passes to the customer. Lebakkens offers all its customers an early purchase option.
This option allows all guests to buy the rented property early and save valuable income. The hire-purchase transaction differs from a retail loan sale in the following ways: After completing this process, DoNotPay creates a repayment letter and sends it to your bank with your VISA and MasterCard codes and regulations that will help your case. We can also send the dispute letter to the dealer. Caitlin Six is a financial services employee who signed an Acceptance Now contract in 2013 to rent a cut sofa, bedroom furniture and two mattresses from a Rooms to Go near Jacksonville, Florida. Six signed a three-year contract and agreed to pay $201.28 per month. She made monthly payments for 15 months and then turned the couch upside down. Rent-A-Center`s records show that she had paid $3,030. She assumed she was about to pay off her account because she no longer had the sofa she remembers, costing $1,299, or two-thirds of the total furniture. Rent-A-Center told her she still owed more than $1,700.
Six requested detailed testimony, but the company would not provide one, it told the Florida Attorney General`s Office in a complaint filed in 2015. In March 2015, she received a call from Rent-A-Center asking her to pay $497.06, or the company would make allegations of theft, according to her complaint. Representatives of the Rent-A Center showed up at her home, leaving notes threatening to call the police if they didn`t pay or return the “stolen” items, she told a reporter. Rent-A-Center has strict collection goals, former managers say. When working for the company, the percentage of customers who were late to a store had to be less than six percent each week, say the workers, who asked not to be identified because they had signed non-disclosure agreements with the company. If stores don`t reach their numbers, managers will have to work extra shifts and could lose their jobs, former workers say. The store`s sales staff also acts as collectors in the first place. They call customers within hours of a missed payment, and employees often go out late to meet customers for a week or more. The Federal Trade Commission received 2,779 complaints about Rent-A-Center and Acceptance Now between January 2016 and June 2017. More than 90% mentioned aggressive collection tactics. Gorman, an Ohio customer, said the Rent-A-Center workers kicked the door of their home in Lima after falling two months behind on a contract for a laptop she nearly paid for. She had lost her job and said she told Rent-A-Center employees that she needed a few more weeks to make the final payments.
Instead, workers broke into her home as she was gone, Gorman told Lima police, citing a neighbor who witnessed the incident. Washington state sued rent-A-Center in 2009, accusing the company of abusive debt collection practices. Rent-A-Center settled the lawsuit in 2010, saying it had done nothing wrong except agree not to use offensive language, not to engage in trespassing, or to visit customers` workplaces after being asked not to do so. Since that settlement, the Washington attorney general has received more than 800 pages of complaints about the Rent-A Center. For more information on other lease options with an option to buy, check out our comparison between Aaron`s and Rent-A-Center. Rent-A-Center`s return policy allows customers to schedule a return for a rented item at any time during the rental period and freeze their payments, a company`s customer service representative said. There is no fee for early termination, and the company keeps records of what you have already paid for the item. Between January 2016 and June 2017, 674 people filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission about issues with Rent-A-Center`s subsidiary, Acceptance Now. Nearly a third had asked Acceptance Now for confirmation that they owed money. The company failed to provide it, former customers said. Ten percent of these 674 customers said errors were found in their credit reports.
Rent-A Center shareholders filed a federal lawsuit against the company in December 2016 over issues with its customer payment tracking system. .