You signed a 60-month copier lease two years ago. Service is terrible. The "low monthly payment" became three different line items. The toner you thought was included isn't. You want out. We've heard this exact story from dozens of NJ businesses over 30+ years, and we've helped most of them get out cleanly. This guide walks through the five real ways to exit a copier lease, what each one actually costs, and the mistakes that turn a bad situation into a worse one.
Not all five options route to ADS-S. Some of them mean you stay with your current vendor and renegotiate. If "stay put" is the right answer for your situation, we'll tell you so.
First, understand what you actually signed
Before you do anything, dig out the contract and find these five things:
- Lease end date — what month does the term expire?
- Remaining payments — how many months × monthly amount left?
- Buyout clause — what does it cost to terminate today? (Sometimes called "early termination," "stipulated loss value," or "liquidated damages.")
- Auto-renewal clause — if you do nothing, does the lease auto-renew? For how long? How many days of written notice are required to prevent it?
- End-of-lease return cost — what does it cost to ship the unit back?
If you can't find your contract, request a copy from the leasing company in writing. They have to provide it.
The leasing company (the financial institution that owns the device) and the dealer (who sold and services it) are often two different entities. A bad service relationship with the dealer doesn't usually let you out of the lease with the financial company.
The five real ways out
If your lease ends in less than 12 months, this is almost always the best option financially. Early termination is deliberately expensive — usually 75–95% of remaining payments plus the residual value.
Math example: 9 months left at $300/month = $2,700 in remaining payments. Adding the residual (typically 10–20% of original cost, say $1,200) brings the buyout to roughly $3,900. Pay the remaining 9 months normally instead and you pay $2,700 — and you get the FMV option to return, buy, or upgrade.
When this is right: Less than 12 months remaining · service is annoying but not actively damaging your business · you can tolerate the current device until term end.
When it's not: Service is so bad it's costing billable hours / revenue · more than 24 months remaining · the device is genuinely broken and the lessor won't fix it.
Before you escalate, try this. It works more often than people expect.
Call your account manager (not the support line — the person whose name is on your account). Frame it like:
"I've been an X-month customer of yours. Service has been [specific issues]. I'm considering moving to another provider and breaking the lease. Before I do that, can we fix the underlying problems?"
Things that are negotiable: faster service SLA in writing · equipment upgrade or replacement · bundled toner if you're currently paying separately · lease term extension in exchange for a better monthly · account credit if you've had documented service failures.
Most leasing companies would rather keep you as a customer than collect on a lease termination — especially if you're a credit-worthy multi-year customer.
If you've decided you're leaving, ask your leasing company for a payoff quote in writing. This is a real number — usually less than the "stipulated loss value" printed in the contract.
Most leasing companies will provide a payoff quote, valid for 30 days, showing exactly what it costs to terminate today. Two things to know:
- Payoff is usually 75–95% of remaining payments + residual. Sometimes you can negotiate 5–15% off if you're paying in one lump sum.
- The payoff is often negotiable, especially toward end-of-month or end-of-quarter when the lessor wants to close revenue.
Send your contract details — months remaining, equipment, monthly payment, what's broken. We'll tell you whether to wait, renegotiate, or switch. No sales pitch if "stay put for 6 months" is the right answer.
This is what most NJ businesses end up doing — and it's how we've onboarded the majority of switching clients over 30+ years.
How it works:
- Your new dealer (us, if you're moving to an HP-only relationship) quotes a new lease for the new equipment
- The new dealer absorbs your old buyout into the new lease — the remaining $3,000–$15,000 on your old contract gets rolled into your new monthly
- The new dealer handles the return of the old equipment
- You're free of the old contract, on a new lease with better terms, with one monthly bill again
The economics: your new monthly goes up slightly because the old buyout is being amortized over the new term, but you escape the bad service relationship and you get current equipment. Over 60 months on a roll-over, the increased monthly typically adds up to roughly the buyout cost — which is what you owed anyway.
When this works: Old buyout is $2,000–$15,000 · new lease term is 48 or 60 months · new equipment is meaningfully better than what you have.
Pay the buyout, return the equipment (or own it outright if buyout includes ownership), and exit the lease world entirely.
When this works: You're closing the office, downsizing, or going fully remote · you're consolidating to existing in-house equipment elsewhere · the buyout is small enough to make sense as a one-time cash payment.
Less common than rolling into a new lease, but a clean exit when it fits.
Mistakes that make a bad lease worse
After 30+ years of helping clients out of bad leases, these are the mistakes that turn an escape into a disaster:
Never stop paying on a copier lease without a written settlement. The leasing company will pursue full balance plus penalties, will report to commercial credit bureaus, and may sue. The cost of "just not paying" is far worse than the buyout.
Don't ship the device back to "force" a termination. The lease is a financial agreement separate from device possession. Returning the equipment without written termination doesn't end the lease — it just means you owe the remaining payments AND lose the device.
If your contract auto-renews for 12 months unless you give 90-day notice, and you miss the 90-day window, you're locked in for another year. Every month of an auto-renewal that you wanted to escape costs you the difference between your bad lease and a good replacement.
Some predatory replacement dealers will sign you up for a new lease promising "we'll handle the old one" — and then either don't, or roll a much higher buyout into your new lease than you owed. Get the old payoff in writing from the old leasing company first.
Some replacement dealers say they'll handle return shipping, then bill you for it later. Get it in writing in the new contract.
When ADS-S helps with the switch
If you're in NJ + greater Philly metro and looking to move to an HP-only program, here's how we typically handle it:
- Free assessment of your current setup. We look at your current devices, contract, and service issues.
- We pull your current lease payoff. Sometimes we can get a better payoff number than you can yourself.
- We quote new HP equipment + new lease that absorbs the old buyout.
- We handle the equipment return with the old leasing company.
- You're on a new lease, with current HP equipment, with one monthly bill.
We've onboarded clients mid-contract dozens of times. It's a standard motion.
We don't sign clients into a new lease at any cost. Sometimes the best advice is "wait it out — your old lease ends in 6 months, just ride it out and we'll talk then." If that's the right answer, that's the answer we'll give.