Rent A Laptop

Flagler residents arrested in rent-to-own disputes

By the numbers

Since 2001, the 7th Circuit has handled 847 failure to redeliver cases. That breaks down to:

Flagler County: 176

Volusia County: 445

Putnam County: 14

St. Johns County: 212

So far this year the 7th Circuit has handled 26 failure to redeliver cases:

Flagler County: 4

Volusia County: 14

Putnam County: 3

St. Johns County: 5

2010 failure to redeliver cases:

Flagler County: 24

Volusia County: 48

Putnam: 4

St. Johns County: 15

Total: 91 cases

2009 failure to redeliver cases:

Flagler County: 30

Volusia County: 81

Putnam County:1

St. Johns County: 17

Total: 129 cases

Source: 7th Circuit State Attorney's Office

PALM COAST -- Rent-to-own places such as Z-best, Buddy's and Rent-A-Center have a particularly potent bill collector they can summon in disagreements with customers -- the State Attorney's Office, which can slap people with felony charges even in cases that defense attorneys say would be better handled in civil court.

A customer who buys a TV from a department store and then disagrees over how much is owed or even stops paying for it will likely start getting phone calls from collection agents threatening to ruin their credit.

But handcuffs and mug shots are a real possibility in a customer dispute with rent-to-own businesses. The handcuffs, trip to the county lockup, expense of bonding out of jail and cost of a defense attorney are all possible in disagreements over how much is owed over a television, sofa or some other item leased from a rent-to-own store.

To all of that unpleasantness, add the long-term stigma of having a felony criminal record.

A Z-best official said the company bends over backward to help customers pay and only resorts to criminal charges when people are stealing from them.

But Kenton Parker, 42, of Palm Coast, said he wasn't trying to steal a laptop he leased from Z-best. Parker said someone at Z-best told him he could take an extra day or two to make a payment on his Acer laptop. Things went downhill from there. Parker said when he showed up to pay the bill, he was told he was late and the agreement jumped from a four-month contract to 12 months.

That meant the bill for his laptop climbed from about $400 to $1,200 when other fees were included, he said.

Rent Laptop » Monitoring Via The Cloud: Monitis Versus Open-Source ...

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