Imagine switching internet service providers. Would you be annoyed if you had to turn in their equipment? What would you do if you misplaced? Would you think it would be reasonable for them to charge you a fee?

In this story, one college student was in this situation, and he was fine with paying a fee for the equipment he was supposed to turn in, but he was not fine with how much they wanted to charge him.

Keep reading to find out what happens when he confronts the customer service worker about this issue.

You do not want the money I owe you? Okay then.

This happened last year. I am a college student in a city 250km away from home and both my parents are truck drivers, so they are also away from home most of the time.

Because of that, sometimes I am the one who has to handle some things that have to be done in person.

In this case, I had to sign to my name a new Internet provider because we were having problems with the previous one. I did that in December of the previous year and the contract lasted until December last year.

However, at some point in June my parents decided to change to a different one because they were getting some very nice benefits and better speeds with it, but because we had signed for one year we either had to keep paying the monthly bill until it expired or pay a compensation, which was more expensive, so we decided to just pay those months and forget about it.

OP messed up.

The problems started in November, when I forgot to check my bank account balance and, since I do not have overdrafts active, the provider had not been able to charge the monthly fee because it was more than the money I had.

Since they get to charge you more for late payments they did not inform me of that until December, when I went to the office to sign the needed documents to stop the service.

They told me that I would have to pay both months and the late payment fees, which if I remember correctly was around 150€ total.

Obviously I was ticked off because we had been paying 6 months for a service we were not using, but it still was my fault for not checking my balance, so I did not argue.

There was another problem.

Then they also told me that I had to return the equipment.

Thing is, until recently Internet providers in my country did not really care that much if you returned the equipment because they use the cheapest options available, but when they realized they could charge you huge fees for not returning it they all started asking for it.

The problem with that was that, since for the last 6 months we had been using a different provider with their own equipment, we had stored somewhere around the house the old one and, since we had not been informed about having to return it after that, it ended up getting lost when we did some renovations in the house.

After searching for the equipment the whole afternoon with no luck I gave up and decided to read the contract to see how much I would have to pay.

He did some research.

After going through the whole 10 page thing a few times, the only part related to equipment I could find was a single sentence stating that “When the contract is terminated, the customer must return the equipment, and if something is damaged or missing, (company name) has the right to charge the customer the value of said part as compensation”.

Since I am a Computer Science student and know my tech, I knew that what they had given me costed around 50€ retail price, so I went to the bank and took 200€ to pay for everything.

When I arrived this is the conversation I had with the girl at the desk.

Me: Hi, we talked earlier today and I am here to pay what I owe you.

He didn’t like what she had to say.

Girl: Sure! That will be 150€. Do you have the equipment with you?

Me: About that, I’m sorry but I think I have lost it.

Girl: Are you sure? If that is the case we will have to charge you 90€ for it.

Me: 90€? That is way too much.

He pushed back.

Girl: I am sorry about that, but it is in the contract you have signed.

Me: Well, I have read the contract a few times and I am quite sure it says you can charge me what the equipment costs.

Girl: Exactly, and that will be 90€.

Me: I refuse to pay that unless I see a receipt or any other document that shows that the equipment you gave me costs 90€.

This is taking awhile.

Girl: I will have to make a call for that, excuse me for a minute.

She goes to the back room and calls what I guess was her manager and after some muffled phone talk she came back.

Girl: Sorry for the wait. I have been informed that I can not give you the information you are requesting.

Me: Well, then I am going to pay you the 150€ and we can terminate the contract.

She wasn’t backing down, but neither was he.

Girl: Sorry but you have to pay the full 240€ to do that.

Me: I am not going to pay 90€ for a (brand and model) router that costs no more than 50€ in any store, and much less for one that you have bought in bulk for even less than that.

Girl: Then we will have to take legal action for the 240€ and you will be blacklisted.

Me: I am not saying I will not pay the two months I legally owe you. I just won’t pay the 90€ without proof that it’s what the equipment costs. I have the 150€ here.

This seems like an odd policy.

I proceed to put the 150€ on the counter.

Girl: Sorry but the amount you owe us is 240€ and we can not terminate the contract if you don’t pay the full amount.

Me: Are you saying you won’t take the 150€?

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Girl: Exactly.

There was only one thing to do.

Me: Okay.

I took my money and left.

After that I wrote an email to the company explaining that I wanted to pay the two months I owed them but that I would not pay anything else unless I had a receipt to have some written proof in case they actually decided to take legal action.

This seems to be an ongoing situation.

I did not get a reply.

A few weeks later I got a call asking about the 240€ and I told them that I was busy at the moment but that they could send me an email with the details.

I never heard back from them.

It does seem like a weird policy and almost like they’re just making up numbers to charge customers since there’s zero proof what the equipment actually cost. It’d be cheaper to go buy a new one and turn that in.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person thinks the story probably isn’t over.

Another person thinks he should simply pay the money.

Here’s a good idea.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a community who realizes their mistake after restricting parking to residents only gets guests and delivery drivers towed.

Nobody seems to think he’s handling this situation well.

It’s annoying, but it’s only $40. If it really bothers him, he should buy the same model elsewhere and turn that in.

Some battles aren’t worth fighting.