CashCall Takes Usury to New Heights
by Nathan Walpow
I was watching Frasier reruns or something, and these ads for CashCall kept coming up, and I saw a number I didn't believe. So I used TiVo's handy-dandy g0-back-eight-seconds button (have I mentioned how much I love TiVo?) and caught it and froze it. The number was 139.34%. Here's the context, from CashCall's website:
Let me do the math for you. Thirty-six times $298.94 is $10761.84. You borrow $2600 (which seems to be the only amount they'll lend you), pay it off in three years, and end up paying more than four times the amount you borrowed (which you don't even get all of, because on top of everything else they have the nerve to charge a $75 loan fee). Though I don't know which is worse—the total you have to pay or the utter chutzpah of plastering that APR (annual percentage rate) right out there for all to see.
The CashCall site is littered with testimonials from satisfied customers, speaking of weights lifted from their shoulders, and of kind and courteous loan agents. Which begs the question: are these people idiots? Surely there are ways to borrow $2600 that don't involve this kind of interest rate. Like, say, your local loan shark.
Am I missing something here?
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