Some contracts come with “support” that feels more like a trap.

What would you do if your delivery partner promised to help grow your business, only to hit you with penalties and higher rates when you came close to meeting your goal?

Would you swallow the charges and move on?

Or would you find a way to meet their terms while making sure you never worked with them again?

In the following story, one business owner finds himself in this exact situation and turns the tables on the other players.

Here’s how it all played out.

Want me to send out 2000 parcels to help grow my business? Ok!

In 2017, I signed a contract with our national mail carrier to deliver my parcels for my webshop.

The more parcels you deliver, the better the rates.

In my league, they had a 1000, 2000, or 5000 parcel target contract. I went with the 2k one.

At the end of year 1, there would be an evaluation, and they said they would be very flexible and reasonable because their priority is “to help grow my business.”

I actually had that in writing.

The details were all cut and dry.

For any parcel I sent through them beyond the 2k target, I’d get a 50% refund of the difference between the 2k and 5k rates (e.g., if the 2k rate is 3.5 euro/parcel and the 5k rate is 3 euro/parcel, they would refund me 0.25 euro back for each parcel above my 2k goal).

On the other hand, for each parcel I was short at the end of the year of the 2k target, they would charge me double the difference between the 2k and the 5k rate, on top of a flat rate penalty fee (so basically 1 euro per parcel I was short in the above example + penalty).

The end of year 1 of my contract is two weeks away, and I’m sitting at 1850 parcels. Thinking that 92.5% of my target is pretty good for year one, I gave them a call to talk about the extra charges and the penalty, and see if I could get the 5k rate for the next year, as I was seeing/expecting strong growth.

They had no interest in actually helping.

In the end, it was their priority to help grow my business, and they are very flexible and reasonable.

No, sir!

They were dead set on me paying the penalty, charging me extra for the 150 parcels, and, on top of that, setting me back to the more expensive 1k target rate for the next year.

I tried to escalate it, but to no avail. So far, for ‘help growing my business and being very flexible and reasonable.’

In comes malicious compliance: I did the math and paying the penalty + extra charges was nearly double of what it would cost me to reach my target if I would just pay for 150 extra parcels out of my own pocket.

Here’s what he did to get back at them.

I bought 150 bubble wrap envelopes dirt cheap, printed 150x stickers with my own address, put those on each envelope, drove to the mail office and dropped off 150 empty envelopes.

Next morning the mailman arrives at my door with a grin on his face (he is a cool guy) and a stash of envelopes, wondering what I am up to.

Later that day, I called them to let them know I had reached my target and that I would not renew my contract.

I signed with a competitor for about the same price per parcel, no strings attached, and did 17k parcels in year 2, which amounts to ~50k euros in business they missed out on.

Wow! That’s one way to rectify the situation.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say about this.

This reader understands companies like this.

Here’s a good point.

According to this person, they don’t understand why companies go for contracts like this.

As this comment explains, there’s a difference between a salesperson and the billing department.

He showed them!

Next time, it may be better to do more research before signing a contract.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.