[NJ] Received an invoice for services already paid for 4 years later.
I’m in New Jersey. I rented equipment from a rental center in 6/2018. Paid in full for the rental upfront. I rented it for one day, a Saturday. The company delivered the equipment Saturday morning. I used it. Called back Saturday afternoon to have it picked up. They didn’t pick it up for a few days. Now 4 years later, 9/2022. I get an invoice saying I owe them for a full week’s rental and 51 months of late fees.
I did not receive any other invoices in the last 4 years. I’ve called them a couple times and they tell me they’ll look into it and call me back. Then they don’t call me back. The last time I called they said they’ll look for the original invoice.
Is it legal to not send an invoice every 30 days? I believe they had a miscommunication on their end about picking up the equipment and are trying to charge me for it, but never sent an invoice until now. Can they make me pay this? Along with all the late fees? I paid in full for what I used.
Posted Sep 12, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC
I am not a NJ lawyer and am not familiar with their statute of limitations claims, notification requirements and defenses such as laches.
The short answer is probably no they can’t make you pay it back.
Well I’m assuming they were supposed to pick it up from you? That’s actually important here. You paid for a select time period and then tried to return it in a timely manner. The reason for the delinquency was due to a breach on their part assuming they were supposed to pick it up for you.
If you were supposed to return it and forced them to pick it up that COULD be a reasonable reason for them to say that they are entitled to more and that it wasn’t paid in full.
However going 50 months without notifying you seems unreasonable on its face and probably doesn’t square with NJ law for a variety of reasons. Hopefully if you get a hold of someone you should be able to resolve it but if you go to court I’d have a consult with an attorney who’s familiar with your state laws and can probably tell you that they’re wasting their time.
Thank you. Yes, they picked it up. I called them Saturday afternoon, same day they delivered it. They were supposed to pick it up Monday. They didn’t pick it up until the end of the week.
Yeah you should be fine. Like Lizzie said it’s probably an error of some sort that you should be able to resolve out of court for no cost. If they are jerks and come after you, you have a strong case and should win based on what you told us but hopefully it doesn’t come to that.
Seems like there may be a problem documenting when the request to pick up item was made if all OP did was a phone call.
I was able to pull up my phone bill to show I made an outgoing call to their phone number on the appropriate date.
But this is where I’m getting nervous. They’ll just claim I didn’t call. And they won’t be able to find the original invoice that shows my one day rental paid in full. I don’t have a copy of the invoice.