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