For me, I had a business partner that screwed me over and left me with a lot of credit card debt. I took out an installment loan of $20K at 6.5% interest to pay down the cards.

It's saved me a lot of money in interest and has been of great value to me.

It also caused my credit score to shoot up over 100 points because I didn't have such high balances on my cards anymore.

I would hardly consider it predatory. I for one am glad they exist.