Subprime loans aren’t just for homes: A quarter of
people who took out auto loans last year are considered subprime,
meaning they have bad credit scores, typically lower than 640. And like
defaulting homeowners, life’s not getting easier for them. In a recent report, The New York Times revealed
that many borrowers with low credit ratings have to endure more than
just sky-high interest rates if they want to drive a car off the lot.
Now they must also allow the repo man to ride with them at all times.
This repo man isn’t a flesh-and-blood person occupying one of the car’s seats, though. He’s a technological extension of the lender — called a starter interrupt device —installed in the vehicles of subprime borrowers. The device allows lenders to track and monitor the location of the vehicle — both in real time and over time — and provides them with the ability to remotely shut off vehicles if, say, the borrower falls behind on payments (sometimes by just a few days) or drives outside an approved area.
There is no escaping debt collectors who can, with the push of a button on their smartphones, disable your car until you cough up payment. As one collector told the Times, “I have disabled a car while I was shopping at Walmart.” The Times provided a number of stories from people who had their cars surprisingly stop working because lenders switched them off for one reason or another. They range from startling — one woman was temporarily stranded at a gas station with her children — to mind-boggling: Another woman’s car shut off while she was driving, “sending her careening across a three-lane Las Vegas highway.”
The danger the starter interrupter poses to borrowers and other drivers is problematic in its own right. But these technologies of control are more than just instruments of aggressive lenders that want to ensure they get the expected return on their investment; they are also a natural product of our terribly exploitative financial system, which is always churning out innovative ways to squeeze the socioeconomically disadvantaged.
taken from here
This repo man isn’t a flesh-and-blood person occupying one of the car’s seats, though. He’s a technological extension of the lender — called a starter interrupt device —installed in the vehicles of subprime borrowers. The device allows lenders to track and monitor the location of the vehicle — both in real time and over time — and provides them with the ability to remotely shut off vehicles if, say, the borrower falls behind on payments (sometimes by just a few days) or drives outside an approved area.
There is no escaping debt collectors who can, with the push of a button on their smartphones, disable your car until you cough up payment. As one collector told the Times, “I have disabled a car while I was shopping at Walmart.” The Times provided a number of stories from people who had their cars surprisingly stop working because lenders switched them off for one reason or another. They range from startling — one woman was temporarily stranded at a gas station with her children — to mind-boggling: Another woman’s car shut off while she was driving, “sending her careening across a three-lane Las Vegas highway.”
The danger the starter interrupter poses to borrowers and other drivers is problematic in its own right. But these technologies of control are more than just instruments of aggressive lenders that want to ensure they get the expected return on their investment; they are also a natural product of our terribly exploitative financial system, which is always churning out innovative ways to squeeze the socioeconomically disadvantaged.
taken from here
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