Contract term renewed by amendment

I signed a two year contract with <snip> for colo space and all the services that come with it. Six months later I needed to upgrade some of the portions of my contract regarding the additional bandwidth and space I needed. Here is a snipped version of the contract amendment I signed.

The amendment states:

"The first amendment to colocation agreement dated <snip>, 2006 ("amendment") is made and entered into as of <six months later>, 2006, by and among <my name> ("customer") and <provider> with regard to the following:

• Customer will upgrade from shared cage to cabinet
  Customer is also upgrading burstability from 10mbps to 100mbps
  Additional monthly recurring charge to be $<snip>
  Contract Term: 2 years

At no point in time did they mention that the 2 year contract portion on the amendment actually meant two years from the date I signed the amendment not my original contract term which I thought it was referencing. According to them, that amendment requires me to stay another six months.

the second problem:
I called about a month and a half before the date my original contract would expire to give them my notice of cancellation. In their terms it states that if I do not give them notice 30 days in advance my contract will auto-renew for another 2 years. My sales rep confirmed that my contract would indeed expire at that date and said to consider our call my "thirty days notice". So I did just that, the next week I had purchased servers at my new location and began migrating my services, when I had completed the migration a week later I came to get the hardware I had at their datacenter. They denied access to my hardware and said that my sales rep would call me. "I guess the amendment you signed doesn't expire until <six months later date>". He brought all this up after he gave me the O.K. and I began paying for servers at a different location.

I have been extremely patient with this company, telling them that this was a big miscommunication and that their bare bones amendment is hardly clear. It didn't even seem that the sales rep knew that the amendment would do that. I sent the issue up to their COO who rushed me an offer to pay the MRC for six months in one lump sum to breach the contract. This just doesn't seem right to me, I feel like they're trying very hard to get a few grand out of my wallet.

Am I just ignorant regarding the 'Contract Term: 2 years' portion of the contract or is that really misleading? The amount is a few grand, if this had to go to court I don't think being represented would be the most cost effective solution. Can someone lay out my options? I am considering finding some local practice that will look at my case for free.

Thanks in advance.