On Wednesday night I rented a movie through Netflix”s Watch Instant feature. As I easily selected a movie, I wondered what else could be rented online. Here are a few of the more interesting online rental options I found.
Friends
Is your social circle lacking? Rentafriend.com allows you to rent a platonic friend. The site suggests you may want to rent a friend to go see a movie, to show you around a new town, to go to the gym or to even give you personal advice. You can search for friends in your area for free (there are about half a dozen in the Golden Triangle) but if you want to rent one, you will need to pay a $24.95 per month membership fee on top of the roughly $10 per hour rental fee for the friend.
Jewelry
Bagborrow orsteal.com allows you to rent designer jewelry (and dresses) by the week. Once it was mentioned in the movie, “Sex and the City,” it became very popular. They have everything from diamond necklaces from about $25 per week to Rolex watches from about $250 per week. Another website, Adorn.com, specializes in renting wedding jewelry.
Dresses
Not that I spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I”ve always found it strange when women purchase an expensive dress only to wear it one time. Renting a designer dress makes much more sense. Several of these sites exist. Pick out your dress, set a rental date, wear it and send it back. Renttherunway.com rents designer dresses for about 10 percent of the retail price. Registration is required before you can browse the dresses. Weartodaygonetomorrow.com allows you to browse dresses before registering.
Games
Gamefly.com is basically Netflix for video games. It offers over 7,000 game titles for virtually all game systems including Xbox, Wii, Nintendo DS and more. You can have one game out at a time for $15.95 per month or two games out for $22.95 per month.
Books
Book rental has been available for about 4,000 years through libraries but only recently have we been able to receive books through the mail. Bookswim.com has plans starting at under $30 per month that will allow you to have up to 5 books out at a time. Booksfree.com has a plan starting at $10.99 per month. Browse their library of books, make a list of books you want and then wait for them to arrive. Obviously your local library is much more convenient and is less expensive, but if you insist on using the Internet to rent books, these are some options worth considering.
Goats
Need to clear some land? Use Rentaruminant.com to get a firm quote on renting a heard of goats and a “goat wrangler” to clear brush and grass from your field. A typical heard of 60 goats can apparently clear 1/4 acre of land in about three to five days. Funny that such a low-tech solution can be rented with a high-tech computer.
Peter Imes is publisher of The Dispatch. You can email him at [email protected].
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