Any PC that has a PCRental Agent installed is tracked by our servers every 2 hours. Since its release, the PCRental Agent is now in more than 60 stores with an average of 30 computers per store.
Samuel M. Burns, Developer, PC Rental Agent

The Issue: How can Rent to Own storeowners prevent our from continuing to use their rental PC’s and Laptops without paying a weekly renewal fee? Especially after numerous attempt have been made to contact the customer for the purpose of discussing an alternative arrangement? Before you know it, that customer is 14 days past due, what can you do?

Regardless of the reason given for non renewal - the computer system was stolen, it somehow disappeared or attempts to telephone the customer have failed because they are never home or they have moved, the bottom line is asset recovery is a time consuming and costly process. We try to collect our asset by driving to the house or registered location, and hope that the customer is there or will answer the door. If we are lucky, we obtain the unit, bring it back to the store and hopefully rent it again.

The Solution: PCRental Agent

As Samuel M. Burns, one of the primary Developers explains. “It’s ingenious Software which”:

• Prevents write offs.
• Has an asset recovery rate of 99%.
• Has a customer return rate of 99%, since they are unable to use the computer.
• When a customer skips on you or it becomes stolen. The Agent tracks location information and can be told to capture key strokes and screens shots. You can track who has it and recover it.
• If stolen, especially in the case with a laptop, the computer gets locked down and private information is kept secure for retrieval upon payment being made or at the discretion of the RTO Store.

“Any PC that has a PCRental Agent installed is tracked by our servers every 2 hours,” says Burns. Since its release, the PCRental Agent is now in more than 60 stores with an average of 30 computers per store. That is over 1800 computers being traced and monitored every two hours. You may be asking where the Storeowner comes into play and what is their role? The software on the store’s side is completely web based and can be administered from anywhere, even from a phone PDA at the airport, while one might be traveling from store to store. The Storeowner can disable, enable, uninstall the software, put into stolen mode, or put the software in record mode on any of their computers that they have on rent within seconds. They have total control via our website and if the customer is paying, there is nothing to administer.

Burns says the software cost is minimal, “If you install the PCRental Agent in a store with just 25 computers on rent and you recover 1 computer you have paid for the cost of the PCRental Agent for the next 3 years. A recovery of more than one computer will not only justify the investment, but also achieve maximum ROI (Return on Investment) from the PCRental Agent, at the same time minimizing yearly write offs. When you also consider the ROI of getting your computers back faster, once locked down it becomes useless to the customer, the savings quickly adds up.”

Burns believes that the RTO industry will soon be revolutionized by this DesignerWare Application Software.