Rent-A-Center is a rent-to-own industry leader

If Magic Johnson and Troy Aikman speak for you, try Rent-A-Center

Personal Money Market may be your portal for payday loans, but if you have your eye on an appliance, electronic device or piece of furniture and want to must up the liquidity to be able to get what you want, payday loans may not always be the most direct route. Utilizing the services of a rent-to-own company in order to pay the bill over time has been a popular method for some consumers, and Rent-A-Center (See http://www6.rentacenter.com/Rent-A-Center-Home.html#1) is one of America’s largest, most publicized rent-to-own companies.

3,000-plus stores across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico

According to rentacenter.com, the Plano, Texas-based Rent-A-Center and its 19,000 employees offers consumers “an easy, affordable way to furnish their homes without incurring a continuing obligation and without needing access to credit.” Name brands are on the menu, as well as same-day delivery, 90 days same as cash and an early purchase option. Interesting, Rent-A-Center repairs merchandise still on rent at no charge to the consumer and they offer them a substitute while the original is being repaired.

In addition, Rent-A-Center offers the “RAC Worry-Free Guarantee,” which is billed as “100% satisfaction or your money back.” Not only do you not need credit to apply, but RAC will match competitor prices. If you aren’t satisfied with your Rent-A-Center item, you can return it within the first week and the full first payment will be refunded.

Online traffic for rentacenter.com: Recovering after a fall

According to the online metric site compete.com, rentacenter.com hit 600,000 unique visitors in January 2009. Unfortunately, a steep decline followed. Numbers for December 2009 were 505,014 unique visitors, which was a 7.92 percent improvement over the previous month. The trend since the heights of January 2009 has been to increase, but there’s still road to travel. Total visitors for December 2009 was 687,185, a 6.71 percent increase over the previous month.

Getting to rentacenter.com meant using Google.com (20.63 percent of traffic), Yahoo.com (10 percent) and Facebook (5.63 percent). It comes as no surprise that “rent a center” is the most frequently used search term (netting a whopping 42.98 percent), while “rentacenter.com” (4.01 percent) and “rentacenter” (2.87 percent) followed up.