Rent A Center
Burglerized by Theives, Victemized by Rent A Cente

On May 6th of 2008 my wife and I were in the process of moving into a new home and had been shopping for a Washer and Dryer unit in an attempt to forever avoid the wasted time spent at the Laundry-mat. After a half day of finding nothing in our price range I decided to listen to the advice of a friend who had told me that Rent-a-Center had some fairly new (albeit beat up) units for sale at a fair cash price.

We purchased a rather decent set for $400 which was actually a bargain since they were almost new and the only problems with the set were cosmetic in nature (I.E. Scratches, etc.) I also (against my better judgment) purchased a very nice Toshiba LCD television set on a rental agreement.

Our merchandise was delivered on the following day (as that was the date we were set to move in) and unfortunately when our water was turned on we found we had some unforeseen leaks and decided to spend another night at our old house and let the plumber work his magic. I am sure you can see where this is going. Our home was burglarized that night and we were to soon understand that we were going to be victimized far worse by Rent-a-Center than by the thieves who violated our home.

Upon bringing the police report to the Rent-a-Center showroom, my wife was threatened, bullied, told that we were responsible to continue making payments, that our mandatory insurance had not kicked in yet and thus there was no insurance on the Television (but they sure as hell charged my debit card for insurance on May 6th) that the police officer had written the report wrong and it needed to be changed and that their own internal investigators were on the case and essentially we were the suspects. She was asked if she realized that filing a false police report was a crime I was so angry when she came home in tears that I decided that it was best to just cease contacting them as I would have very well ended up with charges on me. How dare they. (my wife is also a 40 year old woman with absolutely NO CRIMINAL HISTORY. Not even speeding tickets.)

Long story short (and you wont believe this - But its all true and documented) On the 22nd of May charges were filed against 2 people (I cannot at this time give specifics on the case as it is still ongoing) and a third person recovered the Television. From a pawn shop less than 40 miles away. Yes, thats right folks, apparently (much to my surprise) there are counties in Kentucky that do not require Pawn shops to run serial numbers through the National Database that lists stolen property. OR even require ID to pawn things WOW. At that point I was so angry that the investigators at Rent a Center had not even called around to the Pawn shops in a 40 mile radius (there are only 7) considering that they must have known that there was no serial number check and thus no way of recovering stolen property that had been pawned unless they were to call and ask hey, anyone pawned a 32 inch LCD Toshiba, serial # blah, blah, blah.in the last week or so? No, their investigators were not there to recover the TV, but to make us responsible and that is all.

But wait, it gets better. We took the TV immediately back to those idiots and then called the cooperate office to demand our first month payment be returned ($135.83) as we were specifically told upon purchase that if anything happened to the TV we would get a replacement immediately while the issue was resolved. Our house was burglarized, TV stolen and the only thing we got from Rent-a-Center was accusations and threats. No TVThey put us in contact with the most incompetent fool of a district manager who said our money would not be returned because the Police Report never said there was evident signs of forced entry (it said possible signs - Apparently not good enough for Rent-a-Center). I asked if a copy of the detailed confession would be better to go off of than the Police report as it explained how our door was pried open with a screwdriver (since recovered) or if a call from the Detective (who he had already spoken with. We knew this but played dumb.) would help as he would explain that yes, our house had in fact been broken into and felony charges were brought against 2 people and we were in no way complicit in anything. I am not going to change our policy to make you happy says the jerk

This guy said we did not qualify for the Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back pledge because the TV was not in our possession during the first 7 days (because it was sitting in a pawn shop that the Rent-a-Center investigation team had neglected to call. LOL) and so basically he told us to go to hell.

Well, fortunately for me, I am a resourceful individual who runs a website and has a friend who is a talk radio host on a morning drive time show here in KY (who has since pushed for Rent-a Center to be turned over to collections for owing money for advertising ROTFLMAO) and when I spoke with the regional manager I used terms she could grasp. No longer did I talk about its the right thing to do. Now I used threats more akin to their shoddy business practices.

For $139 I said I am going to hurt your business relentlesslyI will build websites, I will fill out all customer feedback, I will pass out flyers in front of your store with the truth of how you people treated us. Oh, and my wife is a bartender and will recount our horror story to every customer, and make sure to tune in tomorrow to XXXXX radio station. And I hung up.

Less than a half hour later we were called by the store manager and told this was a misunderstanding and upon re-reading the police report they have decided to refund all of our money. Oh, and he apologized for the first and only time throughout this nightmare The moral here, is not to deal with these charlatans at all, but if you do, the only way to protect yourself is to FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE.
Thank you,

Todd
london, Kentucky
U.S.A.

Company: Rent A Center
Country: USA
State: Kentucky
City: London
Address: 104 South Plaza

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