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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

You just don't pay, and point them to (small claims?) court if they want to get paid for the service they don't provide.

Have you actually tried this? Because having not tried it myself, I'd bet a paycheck that you get sent to collections, get a ding on your credit report, and you're still on the hook for taking it to court if you want it resolve to your favor. (Assuming U. S.) And as a cherry on top of that shit sundae, it's probably in the contract that you have to go through arbitration anyway.

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I have done so multiple times, albeit in the UK.

When collections calls, you explain them the situation (service not provided or whatever, and evidence of trying to resolve it with them in good faith) and they go away.

Have yet to see a court summons or anything, although I'd love to see them try their lies in court.

I did not care about the credit report impact - it's probably the only valid reason not to do this if this is something you care about.

I have done so multiple times, albeit in the UK.

Thanks for the follow-up. I suspect UK does make a difference, but IANAL in either country. I do, however, have a bit of personal experience in the U. S. :-)

The first thing that would happen is they would cut off all your service.

If you are relying on them for something other than the thing you don’t want to pay for, this becomes a problem.

For example, I disputed a charge with my CC from the Apple App Store when I was charged for an app that I shouldn’t have been years ago. They immediately cut off my access to the Store. Other apps couldn’t update, OS couldn’t update, couldn’t get new apps, etc.

And this is one of the reasons why I can't buy into the Apple ecosystem. With Android, I would be cut off from all Google stuff but there are more/less work-arounds for those.

But the fact that I have a billing dispute with a company and they are able to hold everything else that bit of technology touches hostage is just wrong. Imagine if you had a billing dispute with the city water company and they cut your city power because of it.

That's why you never deal with walled gardens.

But don't you see? The walled garden makes them feel safe from all the bad people out there. It's like locking yourself in with Rorschach. Yeah, the others aren't gonna get you, but he will.

Let them send you to collections. So what. You can just dispute the debt with the credit bureaus and it won't appear on your reports.

I got charged for the modem even though I returned it to Xfinity (another champion of customer service) when I canceled. It wasn't worth my time to fight, and I wasn’t going to pay for something I didn’t owe. I could take the hit to my credit rating so I did, and after a few years of collections letters, it went away.

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