The same thing happened to me with my small business. I had a $1 buyout at the end of the lease. I sent them the 30 days notice of end of lease intent, and then received a letter from them telling me that the "fair market value" was about $600. I notified them of the $1 buyout clause, they said that they never do that. I sent them a copy of the contract with the $1 clearly there. They continued to draw money from my account, over and above the "fair market value" for a worthless, falling apart, and outdated piece of equipment. After over $600 had been withdrawn (before I actually noticed that the automatic withdrawals were continuing), I requested a refund. They stated that they "never give refunds". Over the course of 2 years after the lease ended Northern Leasing continued to withdraw money from my accout. I received multiple harassing phone calls, from "their attorney", from their "litigation department" and from a variety of their agents. All letters are signed by "Miss Ginger", "Mr. Tito", and similar fake sounding names. I have answered these ridiculous letters with complaints and requests. Their "collection" attempts on money that I have kept them from skimming escallated; I began to answer their "letters" and "demands for payment with very, very, very, very foul language involving their mothers, sisters, and brothers, naming personally each of them from whom I received a "letter". This for some unknown reason upset them, but it sort of made me feel good. I still kept having to go to the bank to dispute unauthorized charges, and the bank kept refunding the money to me. However, whenever Northern Leasing changed its debit date, or the amount by one day or one penny, the charge would go through. I had to sign a block-the-unauthorized-charge for my bank each year, and still somehow the charges get thru, but ultimately refunded to me by the bank. Sad to say that the only way to really stop this is to change bank accounts, which is not easy to do as a small business with multiple authorized automatic drafts as well as automatic deposits are made monthly.
