I have posted before - recently, actually - when I noticed an unauthorized debit in my account from Northern Leasing - $211.12. (I apolgize for that post - I pasted it from a personal rant but forgot to depersonalize.)
Anyway, I may repeat myself, but I do have new information, and none of it is any fun.
First of all, I finally got to see the lease agreement which *I* supposedly signed - this is familiar to most of you, I'm sure. Isn't it interesting that when you all the company, your very first choice is to press 1 to request a copy of your lease? It's incredible. You have to request it because you've never SEEN it, let alone signed it! They can't give it to you the day you sign papers with your merchant services company because they haven't pasted it together yet!
I was stunned by what I saw. It's so clever, I think it might actually be hard to prove. There are my signatures - or they sure look like them. I took out the contract I ACTUALLY signed and was instantly struck by the realization that the signatures on this Northern Leasing lease agreement - two of them - were practically identical to the two signatures on the page I ACTUALLY signed. My signature has little rhyme or reason. Sometimes I finish writing one of the names and sometimes I just scribble through. Sometimes I pick up the pen between names and sometimes I run it all together. I don't just drag the pen in a line in my lazy signature - I just make random scribbles where letters are supposed to be. RANDOM being the key word.
So there were differences in my signature on the REAL document and then I get this fax from NL and the two signatures had the SAME differences AND similarities. It is NOT exact, from what I can see, so I'm guessing it's done by the company's forging expert. What's worse, is that there ARE places where I'm sure I did do the writing. But I was never left with a copy of this document - it wasn't complete - not judging by the finished product, anyway. And those 5 pages of legalese? They didn't require a signature. Why wouldn't those have been left with me if I did, indeed, sign it that day, here in my own home? Why no carbon copies?
Well, yes, it's obvious what they're doing.
Now I'm being told I can take them to task on this - without it costing me a dime - and that it's a pretty solid and convincing case in itself, nevermind all the legal precedents already -and that the whole agreement would be nullified and I could recoup EVERYTHING.
And here's me, calling Northern Leasing today, asking only for my $211.12 back. Me, who has now made a total of 100 monthly payments of $36.40 each - not 48 - nooooooooooooooooo. One. Hundred. The machine can be purchased new for $125. They hadn't made enough of a gauge in my checkbook yet. NO! So they stole more. I'd put a stop payment on them and was told it was good for six months.
I had no idea that a company can simply debit you for a different amount!
And by the time I saw it, my 24 hour deadline for filing with corporate returns had long passed. Yup. 24 hours on a business account. You have to check your account EVERY DAY.
According to them, I had refused to pay an invoice they sent when they couldn't debit my account for $36.40. So this $211.12 includes the invoice (two months "past due" lease payments - past due??? - a service fee), plus the fair market value of the machine, which they calculate as $133 and change.
My "refusal to pay" was based on a phone call with a rep who hung up on me and probably the email I sent the same day. Within 48 hours, they made up my mind for me and took the money - yet it was still 8 days before the due date THEY imposed.
I hate court. I started to write NL - asking for that debit and 3 months' debits (the months after I first contacted them), because it is more than reasonable and I absolutely how any company would NOT heed such a modest request. Others are asking for refunds on overpayments. I'm not! Not until I finally contacted them around payment 96. But I realized I was wasting my time, and I'm just going to pursue this matter in court and hope that it isn't yet another waste of time.
Then again, you'd think it would be easy to convince them that paying $320 to me is better than having to deal with a suit in another state and the potential loss of over $3700. If anyone has ever been successful in bargaining with them, I'd sure like to hear about it. If not, off to court we go.
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