How renting furniture in Texas can land you in jail

by Jay Root and Shannon Najmabadi, Texas Tribune

When Melinda Sandlin walked out of Discount Furniture in Austin in late 2014, she was sure the store had put her on a payment plan to buy a new bedroom suite worth $2,750.

A year later, after realizing she had sent in more than $3,000 for her seven-piece set, she figured she was done. So Sandlin told the store clerk she wasn’t going to be making any more monthly payments.

“I already bought it out,” she recalls telling them. “And they're like, 'Oh no, read your contract. It's a rental contract. It's not a purchase contract.’ ”

That’s when her nightmare began.

Sandlin, 43, had signed a “rent-to-own” contract through a company called Acceptance Now — a division of Plano-based Rent-A-Center, one of the largest rent-to-own companies in the United States. Sandlin had no clue the company had embedded itself in regular furniture stores around the country.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/10/27/texas-missing-payments-rental-furniture-can-land-you-jail/