Surprise! The car is not free!

This morning in the Toronto Sun, I was reading a piece by Michelle Mandel written about a young couple that leased a car.

It seems this young couple found themselved in need of transportation and so they began a sting of bad decisions by leasing a car they could not afford. Instead of purchasing something within their means the couple over extended themselves and signed a lease at nearly 30% interest on a $10,000 car.

After a few months the couple both lost their jobs(no explaination as to why), and stopped making payments on the car.

This is where the article gets interesting.

It seems that both the couple and the columnist are aghast that the company has gone to great lengths in order to track down and repossess the car. This includes contacting the couples references that were listed on their leasing application and then taking the extreme step of contacting the couple via facebook while posing as potential friends.

While I think this last step is rather extreme, it is the attitude of the girl in the article that shocks me. After all of this the lesson she has learned is to not use facebook. Really?! Nothing about living within your means, or returning the vehicle that you are no longer paying for. I have to tell you-if you owed me 10 grand I would probably try to track you down too!

I personally don't feel that the company is entirely in the wrong even though the article is slanted that way. They may have gone to extremes to collect what was owed but this couple clearly had no intention of returning the car they had only made 5 payments on.