Getting Out of a Bad Copier Lease

Getting out of a copier lease is something that many people want to do.  Getting out of a copier lease can become difficult.  Why?  The copier lease is generally done through a bank, banks are good at collections – and they don’t necessarily want to give you a free ride.  So if you are stuck in a bad copier lease, what can you do?

Steps to consider if you are in a bad copier lease:

• You can always try calling the bank or copier company and see if you can re-negotiate the lease.  More often than not, this will not lead you anywhere meaningful
• You can see if sub-leasing is an option and then find someone willing to pay part of the bill.  It’s better to lose $200 a month than it is $500 a month.  The problem is you are not a copier sales rep, so you may have struggles getting the deal closed.
• You can wrap in the old lease into the new lease, but generally if you do that you are just financing interest payments too, compounding the issue.

1. Example:  Your copier lease is $500 a month and you have 2 years left on it.  So, that is $500X24 = $12000.  Wrapping this $12000 into the next copier (say the next copier is $175 per month ($8750 copier) – Now the $8750 needs to add on the $12000 to make the numbers add up – $20,750 ($415 per month) – So yes you can get a new copier with a lower payment, but you are paying $415 for 5 years rather than $175 for 5 years – meaning the $12,000 =$14400 after interest.  The problem just compounds.

• Keep Paying off the copier and see if you could perform Kinko’s like services for business friends.  If you are paying $.07 per color sheet, advertise that you’ll do color for people for $.24 per page.  The $.17 per page – If you do just 1000 prints per month will equal $170 in the bank you can use to pay on the lease.
• Write it off as a loss – This is what most people ultimately do
• Declare bankruptcy – If all else fails, bankruptcy could be an option.  Obviously a silly one if you have a year left at $300 a month.  May be a better idea if you have 3 years left and 5 copiers at $300 a month.

Hope this helps, leases are legal contracts with a bank (generally), so they are certainly difficult to get out of with a lot of skill.  You can always have a lawyer look over your contract too… but if it is from a major bank, that is a waste of money generally as they have their own attorneys going over these details.