tl;dw A debt trap that’s such a bad deal that you’d be better off financing it with a payday loan. They lie about their terms and their PC specs. They advertise no contracts but absolutely have contracts, and the terms are awful.
And they are using paid influencers to promote said debt trap to those that don’t know any better, particularly children.
Probably the most insidious part of this to me. Seeing those clips of “influencers” pushing the idea of convincing your parents to get you a rental PC. Disgusting.
A debt trap that’s such a bad deal that you’d be better off financing it with a payday loan
Literally a lower monthly payment, lower total paid and you end up owning a computer if you finance your computer with a predatory payday loan than with this rental program (per GN’s math)
Edit: at $259/mo that’s already $3108/year or 2-3x the cost of a good midrange DIY PC. Also at an incredible 36% interest rate because this hypothetical individual purchased a $3000 computer on a credit card and only pays a bit more than the minimum towards it, that’s only $177/mo on a 24 month loan. Or if you just got a $1500 computer (a pretty dang good computer!) on a 12% APR personal loan (pretty common from banks) you only pay $133/mo for 12 month, own the computer and only pay a total of $1600
The only way to make this rental program look at all good is if you are literally using the computer to make money but have very littlemoney upfront for a decent enough computer to do the same job (basically the “rent it for 1 month and win a fortnite tournament” fantasy one paid promoter suggested) except, oh look, you can buy a laptop from Dell for $520 or less than two months rental cost if you really don’t have the budget and then use that to make your money to fuel your future baller PC purchase. And I can assure you, that business laptop can run Fortnite if that’s your concern, because Fortnite will run on any potato PC if you turn the prettiness down enough.
Edit 2: Also I just found a similar laptop in 1 minute on ebay for $255 to further kill that “spend your allowance to rent a computer for a month to win a fortnite tournament” fantasy
I glanced at their site earlier (but after posting this comment) and it starts at $59/mo for a budget system with a 10th gen i5 and an RTX3050 so probably a $500ish PC when DIYed. And they have about a half dozen tiers above that up to the top $259/mo which is probably a $3000 PC if the parts were current. It’s still a bad deal no matter how you slice it though
tl;dw A debt trap that’s such a bad deal that you’d be better off financing it with a payday loan. They lie about their terms and their PC specs. They advertise no contracts but absolutely have contracts, and the terms are awful.
And they are using paid influencers to promote said debt trap to those that don’t know any better, particularly children.
Probably the most insidious part of this to me. Seeing those clips of “influencers” pushing the idea of convincing your parents to get you a rental PC. Disgusting.
Literally a lower monthly payment, lower total paid and you end up owning a computer if you finance your computer with a predatory payday loan than with this rental program (per GN’s math)
Edit: at $259/mo that’s already $3108/year or 2-3x the cost of a good midrange DIY PC. Also at an incredible 36% interest rate because this hypothetical individual purchased a $3000 computer on a credit card and only pays a bit more than the minimum towards it, that’s only $177/mo on a 24 month loan. Or if you just got a $1500 computer (a pretty dang good computer!) on a 12% APR personal loan (pretty common from banks) you only pay $133/mo for 12 month, own the computer and only pay a total of $1600
The only way to make this rental program look at all good is if you are literally using the computer to make money but have very littlemoney upfront for a decent enough computer to do the same job (basically the “rent it for 1 month and win a fortnite tournament” fantasy one paid promoter suggested) except, oh look, you can buy a laptop from Dell for $520 or less than two months rental cost if you really don’t have the budget and then use that to make your money to fuel your future baller PC purchase. And I can assure you, that business laptop can run Fortnite if that’s your concern, because Fortnite will run on any potato PC if you turn the prettiness down enough.
Edit 2: Also I just found a similar laptop in 1 minute on ebay for $255 to further kill that “spend your allowance to rent a computer for a month to win a fortnite tournament” fantasy
$259/mo??? I expected the price of a couple streaming services, but this is more like car payment territory.
I glanced at their site earlier (but after posting this comment) and it starts at $59/mo for a budget system with a 10th gen i5 and an RTX3050 so probably a $500ish PC when DIYed. And they have about a half dozen tiers above that up to the top $259/mo which is probably a $3000 PC if the parts were current. It’s still a bad deal no matter how you slice it though