Lease Financing Group LLC Illegally debited my account after lease termination, lost evidence of returned equipment, now threatening legal action Ripoff Chicago Illinois

I had ambitions of a thriving, small consumer business in 2003 and leased a credit card terminal from CIT Finance Group a.k.a. Lease Finance Group, LLC (LFG) as part of United States Small Business Adminstration (SBA) loan offering. When pursuing that aspect of entrepreneurship was no longer feasible in early 2004, I could not get out of the non-cancelable lease. The leased credit card terminal was never used.

After continuing to be saddled with auto-debit lease payment into late 2006, I was informed by LFG's customer service department that I could indeed cancel the lease by paying $319 and returning the equipment. I paid off that amount on 11/29/2006 after the "last" auto debit on 11/15/2006 and subsequently returned the unused terminal to the NYC return address as instructed by LFG customer service. The shipping arrangements I made insured that the terminal would arrive no later than 12/10/2006. I called LFG customer service and provided the relevant shipping information.

In February, I noticed that LFG had resumed auto debiting my account for monthly leased payments even though the lease had been terminated. Their customer service representatives first maintained that I had been assigned a new lease # and they had no record of the original lease being terminated. In two (2) subsequent calls, LFG customer service acknowledged now seeing a payoff amount in my old lease account # and explained that a new lease account number had been mapped to my old one. But, they did not have any record of receiving the equipment and insisted that it was my responsibility to provide proof of shipment, instead of their own asset tracking problem from the receiving dock. Meanwhile, it took my incompetent bank over 3 months to disable LFG from auto-debiting my account. In all, LFG collected 4 illegal payments by auto-debit from my account and refuses to reimburse me.

Unfortutely, I have not found proof of shipping the terminal and LFG is now threatening legal action and demanding full payment of outstanding payments for leased equipment that was returned to them in early December 2006.

Keithf
San Leandro, California
U.S.A.