Why won’t leasing companies allow equipment to be moved without their prior written consent?

The reason is, the leasing company needs to know where their collateral is. The location of the equipment is how taxes (property and sales) are assessed as well as where the equipment is in the event of a default and the equipment needs to be re-possessed.

When you have a customer who does not have room in their office for some equipment that is still on lease, they need to send in written notice to the leasing company disclosing the new address where the equipment will be located.

Companies move and relocate equipment regularly. Be it across town for an office move or across the country to deploy an asset at another branch location. For each leasing company, they get hundreds of notices per month from their lessees informing them that their copiers have been relocated. Unless a customer tells them otherwise, they have no choice but to assume every relocation notice is related to an office move.

We have attached a sample letter in this blog (see Documents and Pricing) the customer can use that may assist them in drafting notice to the leasing company that they have relocated their equipment.

When the customer is drafting their letter, they need to keep in mind that they are not obligated in their lease to disclose the reason they are relocating the equipment. They just need to disclose they are planning to relocate the equipment and that’s it. They only should provide the lease number, equipment make, model, serial number, and the new address where the equipment is being relocated to.

If the customer is relocating some equipment to storage because they replaced it and they disclose that to the leasing company, they may actually not provide consent to relocate the copiers. For no other reason than to be difficult. No matter how emotionally charged the customer is regarding removing old equipment to storage, they are best served only disclosing what they are contractually obligated to and nothing more.

A few other things related to this subject:

If the customer relocates equipment from office to office or to storage, they need to notify their insurance agent of the new address where the copier(s) are located.

If the leasing company or old dealer calls to ask a question (meter read) and the copier is in storage, the customer is only obligated to provide the meter. The same reading it had when it went into storage. Make sure to get the meter read. The customer is not obligated to disclose the copier is in storage or has been replaced, only to provide the address to the leasing company and to provide the meter reads when asked.