---
title: 'How is THIS Legal?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=pl2nJm8iOQY'
video_id: 'pl2nJm8iOQY'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 881
---

# How is THIS Legal?

> Source: [How is THIS Legal?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pl2nJm8iOQY)

## Summary

The video investigates whether Rent-A-Center is a scam by examining its business model, which charges exorbitant prices for rent-to-own items like a PS5. The host shares his personal experience of being asked for excessive personal information and ultimately rejected, despite the company's promise of 'no credit needed.' The investigation reveals a history of lawsuits and settlements for predatory practices targeting low-income communities.

### Key Points

- **Rent-A-Center's Promise** [00:24] — Rent-A-Center offers tech and furniture for a small weekly price, with options to return or buy. However, a PS5 with a $1,000+ cash price can cost over $2,000 if rented to term.
- **Fine Print and Return Policy** [01:54] — The return policy allows pausing payments and reinstating later, which can trap customers into paying more than the item's worth over time.
- **PS5 Pricing Breakdown** [03:00] — A PS5 at $23.99/week for 82 weeks totals over $1,967. An early purchase option after 3 months still costs $264 more than retail.
- **Invasive Information Request** [03:42] — Rent-A-Center asks for last 4 digits of SSN, then via email demands full SSN, employment details, landlord info, 4 personal references, and a photo ID.
- **Acima: A Rent-A-Center Brand** [05:57] — Acima, another Rent-A-Center brand, requires even more information: full SSN, bank account number, driver's license, and income details.
- **Rejected by Acima** [08:22] — Despite providing all requested information, the host was rejected by Acima, a company that claims to approve people with no credit.
- **Legal Troubles** [10:37] — California sued Rent-A-Center for $15.5 million in 2022 for bait-and-switch and inflated cash values. Massachusetts settled for $8.75 million in 2023 for targeting low-income communities.
- **Abusive Debt Collection** [11:25] — Rent-A-Center allegedly filed criminal charges for debt, made harassing calls, and threatened repossession over missed payments.
- **Upbound Group's Mission** [12:27] — Upbound Group, the parent company, bought fintech Brigit for $460 million, offering 'earned wage access.' Their mission is 'Elevate financial opportunity for all,' which the host calls hypocritical.
- **Host Buys Stock to Ask Questions** [13:34] — The host bought one share of Upbound Group ($19.17) to access investor relations and plans to attend the earnings call to ask about their business model.

### Conclusion

Rent-A-Center's business model is predatory, charging up to double retail prices and targeting those with no other options. Despite legal settlements, the company continues to operate, and the host's experience highlights the invasive and unfair practices.

## Transcript

- I, that is the dumbest thing
I've ever done for a video.
Sometimes when I'm doing
these investigations,
I'll start off by cracking jokes
about how I'm about to get
scammed, but not this time.
I gave this company
all of my personal
information for this video,
address, social security
number, bank account number.
You name it, all to answer
a single seemingly simple question.
Today, we have a big one.
Now these guys have
been around for decades
and the promise sounds great.
Get your hands on tech, furniture
for a small weekly price,
return it whatever you want,
or buy and actually own it.
But this is a company
who offer a PlayStation 5
with a thousand plus dollar cash price.
And if you can rent it
all the way through the end of the term,
you can spend over
$2,000 on a standard PS5,
which really leads me
with the question of,
is Rent-A-Center a scam?
Okay, so that did not go as planned.
We walked in and they
have no PlayStations.
They have TVs and a whole lot
of furniture and that is it.
But as we started to look
at them for this video,
Rent-A-Center is so much bigger
and so much more sophisticated
than just selling you TVs
and renting you PlayStations
and couches and stuff,
that I think that it really does merit,
I think, a deeper look.
Unfortunately, that deeper
look is gonna have to wait
until I can actually get
my hands on something
from Rent-A-Center,
'cause this one told me
they're out of PlayStations.
And the online store
apparently doesn't work,
which I find that hard to believe.
So getting started online
just by submitting an order
or you can visit a Rent-A-Center store.
Tried that, didn't work.
Step two, payment set up and delivery.
We'll finalize your order
details, set up a payment plan,
and schedule a free delivery
or curbside pickup where available, okay.
And then, enjoy worry free with
our easy ownership options,
product repairs included during
the life of the agreement,
and no long-term commitment.
Okay, let's dive in.
This is one of those ones
where I know that maybe not all of us
read the fine print on things.
This is one where you should
probably read some fine print.
Do I need a good credit score
to rent from Rent-A-Center?
No.
We consider many factors in
reviewing your application
and regularly approve customers
with less than perfect credit history.
What is Rent-A-Center's return policy?
At any time, you can contact your store
to schedule a return of your product,
or return the merchandise in
person and pause your payments.
When you're ready, you can come back,
reinstate your agreement to get
the same or comparable item,
and pick up your payments
right where you left off.
So you can see how easily this
could get you into trouble.
You look at it and go, "30 bucks a week?
I can handle that, no problem."
But maybe four or five months from now,
you can't handle that anymore.
You have to return it,
and you can very easily end
up with literally nothing.
You borrowed a PlayStation
for four or five months,
and you spent more than the
entire PlayStation was worth
for the privilege.
I'm gonna keep going.
The longer I go here, the more
visibly upset I'm gonna get.
So this is me.
I'm seven-tenths upset.
See how far we make it by the end.
So your options are
small, flexible payments.
You can own it when you're ready,
or you can pick up where you left off.
So here's the PS5.
So let's just choose the
$23.99 a week option.
So with this, I can either
pay the weekly amount
for 82 weeks, or after
three months of paying,
I can give them the cash price to own it.
But then I would be paying $264 more
than what the PS5 should actually cost.
So why would anyone do this?
Well, the answer is no one does it at all.
It's here to give you a
same as cash price value.
Just pay it off in three months, bro.
When in reality if you could
pay it off in three months,
you would absolutely not be
going through Rent-A-Center.
It all just feels so predatory, right,
and it just feels needlessly complicated.
Like, why does it have to be like this?
So I've gone through the initial process
and the information they ask about you
is your email address, phone number,
and the last four digits of
your social security number.
- [Alex] Holy crap, that's invasive.
- They didn't ask for my name or anything.
I gave them that.
They pulled up my name,
date of birth, my address,
every address I've lived in
the last 10 years instantly.
So that's great, I mean
super convenient, right?
So they approved me to
get $2,000 worth of stuff.
But when I went through that process,
the online account's like,
good job, you're approved.
Let's go add more stuff to
your cart, yada, yada, yada.
But at the same time,
the store has reached out
and they've texted me basically and like,
"Oh hey, we actually don't
have that PS5 in stock.
We're gonna try to find you another one."
I'm like, "Okay."
So I'm pre-approved.
That's the good news, right?
I can get myself a PS5,
everything's fine once
they track one down,
except, I'm not pre-approved.
Let me read you an email
that I just received.
"Hey," this is from the store,
"Hey, we actually need just
a little bit more information
to complete your rental form."
You know, we already have
your social security number,
your date of birth, your
phone number, your address,
all that kinda stuff.
We just need a couple more things.
I'm just gonna list off real quick.
"We need your source of income,
so the name of your company,
address, phone number, department,
pay cycle and pay stub,"
casual, "your landlord,
so please tell us the
name of your landlord,
the phone number when you moved in.
We need four personal
references, first and last name,
phone number, relationship,
and send us a photo of your
ID or driver's license."
I don't like this, I don't
like this, I don't like this.
If you can believe it,
this is going even farther off the rails.
So after they sent me that email
asking for all that personal information,
that would almost certainly make it clear
that I am a YouTuber doing
a video on their product,
I responded to the guy.
So first of all, he did text me saying
that they did find a PS5
for the same amount of money
that I had agreed to
online, so that's great.
But then I responded saying,
"Hey, I looked at the email
and that feels like way
too much information
for renting a game console.
The online account said
it was already approved."
He responded, "We are rent to own
and we need to verify all that information
before we are able to delivery
or release any of our products.
We also use Acima to finance
some of our products.
They ask for less information."
So Acima, come to find out
after a little bit of Googling,
is another Rent-A-Center brand.
So my understanding is that the corporate,
like parent company of Rent-A-Center
is called Upbound Group.
They used to be called Rent-A-Center.
They got sued a bunch, as
we'll probably discuss later,
so they rebranded as the Upbound Group
and they have multiple
like divisions, right?
So there's Rent-A-Center,
which actually has the
physical items in the stores,
but Acima is kind of
like the same concept,
except at other retailers.
So I told him, "Yes, I would
love to check that out.
Acima works on the items from your store?"
And he responded, "Yes, correct.
I'll send the link now."
So we're like three layers deep here,
and that if you are unable to be approved
or you're not willing to
give them all the information
to Rent-A-Center their side brand, Acima,
will apparently also let
you do the same thing,
but presumably with
less information needed.
I just feel like this is
garbage all the way down.
Like, we just keep digging and
it just gets worse and worse.
404 page not found.
Are you kidding me?
The link he gave me just doesn't work.
Great great.
Then, let's try this.
Let's just try to shop online.
Let's get something from,
I don't know, Walmart.
That feels reasonable enough.
Oh, okay, they're gonna tell
me the basics of leasing.
So your path to ownership is this.
"Acima owns the lease items.
If you make all of the lease payments,
or use an early purchase option,
you will own the property.
If you do not use an
early purchase option,
you may pay more than
double the retail price."
So if you don't early purchase,
you can pay more than double.
Let's do this.
Let's see what it would
cost if I bought a PS5.
So PS5 is what, $650 now?
Let's try that.
So 65000,
$650, which is the cost of my PS5,
and the payment, let's just do monthly,
just to make it clean and simple
compared to Rent-A-Center.
What is my estimate?
My initial payment's $49 a month.
It would give me 12 payments,
which means that I will
end up spending $1663!
That's slightly better than
Rent-A-Center, but not by much.
Oh, and here we go.
It is the exact same thing.
So they're asking for
the mobile phone number,
the last four digits of
your social security number,
and the email.
Alright, fine, let me go
through the application
and we'll see what
happens on the other side.
Probably sadness.
"Sorry, we were unable to
approve you at this time."
- [Alex] What the, what?
- I can apply again in 60 days.
Okay, so this was actually
much more invasive
than the Rent-A-Center.
So I gave them the
initial bit of information
like I did with Rent-A-Center,
you know, the last four of
my social security number,
phone number, and email.
With Rent-A-Center,
that was enough for them
to pull up all of my information
and I got the approval from that point,
until they asked for stuff over email.
Acima said that was not enough,
so I had to give them my
full social security number,
my name, date of birth, my address,
and then a second page asked
for my driver's license,
my ID, my bank account number.
I (beep) gave it to them, by
the way, just so you know.
They also asked for my source of income,
how often I'm paid, all this stuff.
I should have lied.
I gave them that.
I gave them all of that,
and they have now told me
that I have been not approved.
This is the stupidest
thing I've ever done.
The S word, it's thrown
around a lot on this channel:
scam, I mean, and.
- [Alex] Oh, thank God.
- I'm not gonna lie,
I wanna like sit down.
I wanna actually like dive
deeper on Rent-A-Center,
on Acima, on the Upbound
Group as a whole, but I,
this is nasty, like, this is bad.
Okay, let's actually take a second
and go over what just happened here.
I gave Acima, again a company
fully owned by Rent-A-Center,
my full social security
number, my address,
my employment info, my
bank account number,
my pay schedule, my income.
I stupidly handed over
everything they asked for,
and I got rejected by a company
whose entire pitch is, "No credit needed.
We approve people that
other places won't."
So then who the (beep)
do you actually approve?
Seriously?
Like they're not gonna tell me.
But it does kind of make you wonder
that if a business model
that is built on charging
almost $2,000 for a used PS5
only works if you quite
literally have no other choice.
But look, maybe this was just me, right?
It was just my experience.
I got unlucky.
Well, about that.
Back in 2022, the
California Attorney General
sued Rent-A-Center, who ended
up settling for $15.5 million.
The state alleged they had
a whole list of things,
bait and switch advertising,
forced auto renewal payments,
limiting how customers could return items,
so they got stuck on longer payment plans.
And California specifically
called out Rent-A-Center
for inflating their cash
values by 15% across the board
to force customers to pay more.
So when I found that $800
cash price on a $650 PS5,
yeah, that's no coincidence.
And California isn't the only one.
In 2023, Massachusetts hit
them for another 8.75 million
for what the Attorney
General there called quote,
"Abusive misconduct targeting
low-income communities."
These stories are almost even worse.
Rent-A-Center allegedly
filed criminal charges
to collect debt, left harassing
and obscene phone calls,
and threatened to
repossess household items
over missed payments.
The Wikipedia page is great actually.
Underneath all the jargon
about how they do all these donations,
there's just a whole laundry list
of all the times that
they've gotten in trouble
with local and federal governments.
Like, it is just a company
who has been a serial problem.
It's almost like they
take advantage of people,
and everyone has to give
'em a slap on the wrist
every once in a while, and
they just keep doing it.
Now maybe a lot of this,
although certainly not all of it,
is technically legal, but Rent-A-Center
honestly has one of the
scummiest business models
I have ever seen.
Because believe me,
there are so many better
options out there.
Used stuff off of Facebook marketplace,
you really do have a larger expense.
A loan from a credit union
is gonna give you way lower
rates than Rent-A-Center.
And even something like Klarna or Afterpay
is probably a better option.
Although, the whole
buy now pay later thing
is a separate can of worms.
We should do a video on it later.
But like, it just, it's
all bad all the way down.
In January of 2025,
Upbound bought a fintech
company called Brigit.
Brigit does quote, "earned wage access,"
basically letting you
tap into your paycheck
before your payday, plus like
some credit building stuff.
They paid $460 million for it.
But definitely, definitely
don't call it a payday loan,
of course not.
It's just a way to get
access to your paycheck
before it actually arrives.
Sure.
And here's my favorite part.
The Upbound Group has a really
touching company mission.
"Elevate financial opportunity for all."
What are you talking about?
Financial opportunity for you, only you!
Literally, no one else
wins in this scenario!
It is just you!
Now, we did try to reach out to Upbound
to get their comment
on, well, all of this.
And it turns out, this is hard to believe,
there's actually no press contact
anywhere on their website.
This is a publicly traded
billion dollar company
that owns three consumer brands,
and yet, the only way to contact corporate
is through investor relations.
And so in totally unrelated news,
I, Austin Evans, am
now a proud shareholder
of the Upbound Group.
Yes, my friends, I've spent $19.17
for a single share of the Upbound Group
to make sure that I can
not only take advantage
of their investor relations portal,
'cause I have a lot of questions
about the business model,
but also as of recording this video,
their earnings call is in three days.
And I cannot wait to join
and ask some questions,
about exactly how their
business model really works.
And so if you too would like to join me
in doing wildly irresponsible
things for content
and see where this lands,
definitely be sure to subscribe to the channel,
and ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling button.
Also quick PSA.
If you've ever been a
Rent-A-Center customer
in either California or Massachusetts,
you should actually look
up those settlements.
They may actually owe you some money,
but until next time, my friends,
I'm gonna go check my credit score
and pretend that none
of this ever happened.
Well, I'll be doing that
at least until I wait for
the next board meeting,
where I will be there.
Wait, can I actually go to
the physical board meeting?
I don't think so.
Well maybe.