We moved into an office last summer. The office had a copier in it. The previous occupant of the office asked us if we wanted to take over the lease of the copier. We did. We’ve found we don’t use it much at all. We don’t want it in our office. It takes up too much room and it takes a lot of energy.
So, I called the local number on the copier for Smile Business Products, and was told that the lease is “non-cancellable.” They referred me to lease holder, De Lage Landen, and they said it was non-cancellable as well, but I could buy out the remainder of the lease if I would like to. I wouldn’t. I want this gone from our office. They put me into the voicemail of someone from another department.
The thing that makes me angry is that one of the precepts of their business is not allowing customers to stop doing business with them. If I had a pleasant experience, then who knows maybe when we grew and have 10 offices I would have called them and said I want two industrial sized copiers for each one. Now, unless I get surprised somewhere along the way, that is never going to happen.
Broken business.
Update – got a call from the VP of sales for Smile late this afternoon. He gave me the number and name of someone to talk to at DLL, but basically told me it was out of his hands, although he did say he may have a way to help me eventually. My take here is that he said that his company got paid for the copier by the finance company and don’t own it anymore, they just service it.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | copiers, delagelanden, smilebpi
And you signed on for this because … you don’t read leases that are put in front of you …. duh …. especially on an ‘industrial sized’ piece of equipment? If they had left a delivery truck in the parking lot would you have just jumped in? And, they said “take-over-the-lease”.
THINK, THINK, THINK!
Jim, I read the lease before I signed it. Business needs change. They didn’t HAVE TO do anything. But it would probably have been good business for them to do something.
PS – I don’t know you, but you seem very angry. Might want to talk to someone about that.