FlexiRent? Flexi-Ripoff

It is surprising how many ways people can find to exploit one another. Renting electrical/electronics goods is one that makes my skin crawl.

For example, Harvey Norman carries laptops. Lets say you want to get a simple Netbook for you kid to use for studying. There's a nice one available for $599. Hmm, you don't have $600? Credit cards are already maxed out? No problem, FlexiRent is there for you. You can rent it for $9.17/wk.

Hang on, lets check the fine print, then do the math. That $9.17 per week is applicable over 24 months, two  *years*... That's 108 weeks. $9.17 x 108 = $990.36. You're paying nearly double for that laptop.  And do you know what the real kicker is? That's to *rent* the laptop. After two years you hand it back.  If you put it on your credit card that you get stuck paying interest it'll probably end up costing you $700 or so, but at least after two years it's yours.

How on Earth are people stupid enough to get suckered into something like this?

To make matters worse, some of these rental schemes get even more clever. They'll let you "upgrade" after 18 months on a 24-month agreement. The initial reaction isn't too bad. Take $9.17 x 81 weeks = $742.77 then you can exchange it for another laptop of equal or greater value. (Actually in this example it's still a bit of an obvious rip-off, in the real example I found that "deal" on the 18 month rate actually worked out to just under the value of the goods...) However, there's that fine-print catch again: You need to renew a new 24 month agreement on the upgrade. So lets see, even if you upgrade to something worth the same value 18 months later they've hooked you into 189 weeks at $9.17 or $1733.13 and nothing to show for it afterwards.