I hear ya, but I gotta say, my wife and I live off my income which, while decent, is a far cry from pulling us out of poverty. We live cheap, we eat cheap and we sacrifice an awful lot. I have friends who use these services and eventually find themselves on hard times. I've watched many a friend have furniture, including couches, love seats and big screen TV's lose it when they fell on rough times.
We very briefly considered RTO, but fell back to our original resolve of, if we can't pay cash for it, we don't need it. I'm thankful we did. Instead, we saved until we had the cash and went and bought the freezer outright. At least now I know that, should we find ourselves in a bad financial spot, I won't have anyone coming to repo the freezer. Lol.
I think it's part of the bigger issue in America: We gotta have the best and the newest, we gotta go bigger than the neighbors, and we gotta have it now. All very false premises. We have done very well by taking the "can't pay cash/don't need it" approach. I think most would be much happier and less in debt if they did!
“We live cheap, we eat cheap and we sacrifice an awful lot.”
And that’s what a lot of people refuse to do. They “deserve” better, they want it and explicitly don’t care what the consequences are of getting it.
I wholey agree, pay cash is the way to go, but I also know that like it or not these places do provide a valid service in context to how they operate... do I agree with everything they do? Nope and I agree most would avoid them if they could.
With that said however, when you have to wash clothes for 4 kids, and the payment to the rent to own place is less than the cost of the laundromat, while the overall purchase price is far higher than paying cash, the decision to go this route can be a reasonable move for those with lower income.
And yes the down side is miss a payment and its gone.