A
new kind of enterprise has joined the long list of businesses that take
advantage of the poor. Joining the cadre of payday lenders, pawn shops,
unscrupulous used-car dealers is rent-a-tire places, from which
consumers pay up to four times the cost of buying:
When the tires on their Dodge Caravan had worn so
thin that the steel belts were showing through, Don and Florence Cherry
couldn't afford to buy a new set.
So they decided to rent instead.
The
Rich Square, N.C., couple last September agreed to pay Rent-N-Roll
$54.60 a month for 18 months in exchange for four basic Hankook tires.
Over the life of the deal, that works out to $982, almost triple what
the radials would have cost at Wal-Mart.
"I know you have to pay a
lot more this way," said Florence Cherry, a 57-year-old nurse who
drives the 15-year-old van when her husband, a Vietnam veteran, isn't
using it to get to his job as a prison guard. "But we didn't really have
a choice."
Ken Bensinger of the Los Angeles Times reports:
Here.
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