ambivalent comment

You are not wrong, but there's probably not a lot you can do other than make yourself such a pain in corporate's ass that they just wipe away that little bill rather than have to deal with you. That might not be possible now that they're talking collections. Now you could wait for the stupid thing to go to collections; once you get a collections notice, you have 30 days to notify the collection agent *in writing* (preferably by certified mail so you can be sure they'll open it) that you dispute the charge; they are legally obligated to investigate and verify the charge and they are not supposed to report it as a bad debt (to credit reporting agencies, or CRAs) during that time. Some collection agents hate this process so much that they just send the debt back to the biller, at which point you would have created a pain for corporate and you could call every day and hassle them patiently until they see things your way. Oh, if you do this, call the collection agent frequently to check on the status of things; if they do send the debt back to the biller, you'll want to call the biller ASAP to try to get them to drop it. You could also take them to small claims court, but um, your time is worth more than that. Another response: Spread bad publicity all over Chambana about the way this business treated you poorly and make sure all of UIUC knows not to get work done there. ;-)