rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance She Told Me To Sue Her... So I Did!

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

r/Maliciouscompliance In today's episode, OP is helping his friend resolve a bogus ambulance bill that is most definitely illegal. He calls up the ambulance company to try to resolve things peacefully, but the representative on the phone is less than helpful. She yells, "So sue me!" The thing is, OP is a lawyer, so he's more than happy to maliciously comply with that request! After he files the lawsuit, the company's lawyer calls back and practically begs to settle out of court. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A friend from school reached out to me to ask for help dealing with an ambulance company. One of her parents had passed away in an ambulance while traveling between a nursing home and a hospital. The ambulance company sent my friend a bill which she couldn't afford to pay and was threatening to send the bill to collectors. I said, don't worry, my friend. Your parents' estate is responsible for this bill, you don't have a personal obligation to pay it. So they can't send it to collections in your name. Let me just mail a short letter and they should stop bothering you.

I typed a very polite letter that said, this person has legal representation, please seize any and all shenanigans. And I thought that was the end of all this nonsense. Fast forward a few weeks and my friends sent me a picture of another bill. Because the law is so cut and dry on debt collection, I assume the England's company had some computer or human error which caused another letter to be sent. I said no worries my friend, I've had someone messed up. Let me give them a call real quick and figure this out. Now imagine a super cool montage of me working through a really long automated phone tree before talking to an actual human. Hello, I'm a lawyer representing my

friend. I sent you a letter asking you to stop sending her collection notices and she got another notice yesterday. So I just wanted to figure out why that keeps happening and how to make sure these letters stop. I think to myself, surely this will be a quick call and we can all have a laugh about whatever error occurred. She said, Will stop sending her bills when she pays us. Uh, but that's pretty illegal for like a lot of reasons. I can think of three right off the top of my head. So instead of me getting all riled up and starting a lawsuit, can you just be cool?

Pretty please. It's not illegal. Try to suit with if you want our lawyers to explain it to you. This woman made me say the phrase that I hate more than any other phrase in the world. May I speak with your manager please? Nope, I am the manager, and also I am more familiar with the FDCPA than you are. What we're doing is perfectly legal. Tell your friend to pay.

So side note, the FDCPA or the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act sets out certain rules for what debt collectors can and can't do. But some states like Texas, shocking I know, has stronger rules that protect debtors. I didn't know whether or not the ambulance company was violating any FDCPA laws, but I knew for sure they were violating the TDCPA. And to be clear, I'm a lawyer, so when I say 100% sure, I mean 100% sure. I say, telling me that I don't know what I'm doing is rude. Hacling my friend after her parent passed away is shockingly rude. So this is your last chance before I hang up to angry type of lawsuit and angry file it.

You do not want me to sue on this because I will win. Please do, and we'll see you in court. Have a nice day. She hung up on me. Oh, man, I was pissed. That was easily in the top 10 times of me being the most pissed off. The whole conversation took about 10 minutes. I have a fairly high tolerance for abrasive people.

Most people don't look forward to talking with a lawyer. I get it. Still, sending collection notices to the wrong person after that person buried a parent and telling me that I'm a bad lawyer was pretty mind-blowing. I literally started working on this complaint as soon as I hung up. Because if I threatened to sue you and then you asked me to sue you, my hands are tied. After I filed a lawsuit and the company was served, presumably followed by an actual lawyer reading the complaint and thinking, oh wow, we really screwed up here. A

very apologetic lawyer called and we reached an agreement to settle which included an apology to my friend. So here's an idea. If a lawyer calls you up and says that he's gonna sue you, maybe don't provoke him into suing you, especially when you're the one who did something wrong. I'm sorry, but that lady really had it coming. What was she expecting to happen? Our next reddit post is from Papa Pa. I was working as a cleaner at a construction site, and my boss, man, Bob, did not like me. I guess because I was a young woman in a man's world, I don't know.

Bob was an old and bitter man, his life was so boring that he often came to work two hours early. He did this almost every morning, even when he had a day off. Other workers were nice to me, especially John who's important to the story. John was a good man, nice, funny, and kind. An example of that is when John protected me, when Bob said that the only place that he could change my clothes was in his office. After that, John started to track when I came in for work, and he kept Bob busy when I changed my clothes. But onto the main story. This happened when the building we were building was closed to finished. I was cleaning up inside the building when I heard Bob's voice.

Hey OP, why does the place look like this? I looked around. Like what? Like this, there's tools all over the place. You should keep this place clean. This is a construction site. There's tools, workers use them. What do you want me to do? Collect them? Yes. I need you to collect all the tools that are not in use right now. You want me to collect all the tools that are not in use right now? Like take them outside to storage so people need to walk there to get them again? What's your problem? Just do as I say.

Collect all the tools and don't do anything else before that. Just do as I say! Collect all the tools and don't do anything else before that. Then Bob just walked off. At first I was mad, but then I thought why not? And so I started to collect all the tools. If a worker put down his hammer to pick up a circular saw, I took his hammer and walked it outside. I even found a wheelbarrow that I used to take even more tools in one trip.

I took all the tools to storage. At one point, John stopped me looking very puzzled and asked, what are you doing? We use those tools. I know. I'm sorry this makes things hard for you, but Bob told me to collect all the tools that aren't in use right now, so that's what I'm doing. Why would he make you do that? I don't know. I'll go talk to him.

John left, and after while he came back. You weren't lying. Bob just told me to let you do your job. Well, then I guess I'm gonna do my job. So I took more tools to storage. After doing this for about an hour or so, workers started making signs saying, don't take this tool.

And of course I didn't take those tools. I had to explain to the workers why I kept taking their tools, but they were so nice they just made more cardboard signs saying don't take my tools. Eventually Bob started to notice the signs and he wanted answers. What are all these signs? I explained that workers put them up. Yeah, but why? Before I could answer John intervened. You told Opeda collect all the tools, and that's what she was doing, so we made these signs to stop her. Well, why didn't you stop her from getting people's tools? John said, because you told me not to?

I said, and since I've been running around gathering tools, I haven't gotten any of my other work done either. Why not? Because people are constantly bringing tools back inside. I got yelled at, but it was worth it. And then beneath this story, Zorbe says, Bob is a tool. You should have collected him. Our next credit posted from this percentage. Back in 1990, I was a relatively new medic assigned to a surgery ward in the naval hospital. Our patients were all post-op and there were 60 bits. There were six or so

corpsmen assigned to take care of the patients. Part of our duties were to write down our findings and observations as we make our rounds. This surgery ward is usually a first assignment for corpsmen and nurses coming fresh from school. I joined the Navy when I was 21, so I'm a bit wiser than my peers who were all 18 or 19 years old. I know that, especially in the military, there's the by-the-book way of doing things, and then there's the effective way of doing things. We had volumes of manuals that covered every aspect of our jobs and duties that you could imagine. Queue the new nurse who wants to show how good she is at managing the lowly Cormin troops.

She was merciless, always looking for opportunities to embarrass or cause trouble for us. One evening, I saw her shouting at one of the corpsmen for using an unapproved abbreviation in a patient's chart. What was the offensive abbreviation? ASAP. He had written that the patient needed evaluation ASAP. You would have thought that he had personally offended her honor or something. I went and looked in the approved abbreviation section of our operations manual to confirm that it wasn't there. Indeed, it wasn't. I did find that there was

a very extensive list of approved abbreviations available to use, though. Cue the malicious compliance. I told all the corpsmen on their shift to bring their charts to the break room. We then changed all of our charts to use nothing but the approved abbreviations. The notes looked like they were written in another language. I made sure everyone could read their own notes and then told them to return their charts. Later, that nurse came by to review our notes. While this is done, the corpsman stands by the bed of the patient. The nurse looked at the chart, looked at the note and said, what is this?

I said, I don't understand. What do you mean? I don't understand anything you've written. It says the patient is recovering well with little difficulty, but he'll need further evaluation based on his comments and visible demonstration of discomfort and reduced mobility in his upper left limb. That's not what this says. Ma'am, I assure you that it does, and these are all approved abbreviations. I'm sorry that you don't know them I do realize that you're new. I smile. She does not

My chart is the first of 60 chart. She has to review. I have never seen Cormin so eager to review chart notes We did go get the manual for just to be helpful Enjoy the classic taste of the holidays at Tim's with the new non-alcoholic Bailey's flavored holiday menu get the manual for just to be helpful. Why do I love getting my last minute gift at shoppers drug mart? Well, lots of stores, many open late, great collection of gifts, and let's not forget the PC optimum points. I get gifts for them and points for me. And so can you.

Go to shoppers, exclusions apply. Our next word it poses from Tuna Tofu. When I pay my mortgage, I round up and divide in half. The way that I pay my monthly mortgage is that I pay half of my mortgage every two weeks. Also, my mortgage got picked up by another company when my mortgage company went out of business. If I wanted to keep making payments every two weeks, the new company required that I would have to make a $300 down payment and an extra $40 each month. Oh hell no. I spoke to my credit union and set up auto pay every two weeks. So nearly a year goes by and I get one of those scary letters. You're

in default on your mortgage, unless we get ex-payment within 10 days of this letter, we will foreclose. I was astounded since I'd never missed a payment and I was actually a couple of months ahead of schedule. I spoke to their accounting department and it seemed that they couldn't accept half payments only full payments, even though they'd been accepting my half payments for over a year now. So the money had to sit unapplied until a full payment was accrued. That made sense, except again, they got more than enough money from me and it was always in the account in full before the due date. So on the due date, they should've just taken the left over money and applied

it to the mortgage. So, upon further digging, the rep says to me, oh, by the way, we have $8200 of unapplied funds in this account. What do you want to do with it? Uh, pay my mortgage with it? Oh, we can't do that. So, I had to get them to cut me a check for $8200. Pay 45 bucks for them to overnight it to me. Take it to my credit union, cash it, pay $25 for cashiers check, and then pay another $45 bucks to send the cashiers check back to them. I called relentlessly to see when it arrived, and I had all kinds of postal tracking, signature confirmation, etc.

Remember, I only had 10 days to get all this straight. So they get the check and verify that it's applied to my mortgage and that there will be no foreclosure. The rep then tells me, Well, your next payment is due in two weeks and there will be penalties and late fees applied. So the amount is such and such and, by the way, we're doubling your interest rate. Uh, no, this is all your company's fault.

She says, You knew these were the terms and conditions when you took out our mortgage with us. Uh, no. I didn't take it out with you. I took the mortgage out with another company and I was assigned to your company. Well, don't be late with your next payment. I don't think so. I want to speak to your manager.

So I finally get to speak to a manager and he wasn't much better. His only response was, well, you could always go with another company, but good luck with that these days. There are so many foreclosures and your credit isn't very good for missing so many payments. So I decided to take his advice. I contacted my credit union, explained everything, showed them their own payment transfers, and the mortgage

statement showing the other company who received the money by weekly, light clockwork, and my credit union took over my mortgage. I got a reduced interest rate and killed all the fees, penalties, and got the overpayment back. So when a company acts like they have you over a barrel and tells you to go with someone else, do it. Our next credit post is from Unfinished Phone. This happened a number of years ago.

I worked with a small architecture firm as a designer. We specialize in high-end homes for incredibly wealthy people. The kind of wealth where they know that they can easily screw you over without consequences just because they can. We were working on a new project, a custom designed home. The previous house on-site had been demolished based on securing a permit with some very, very preliminary drawings for the new place. Then, the client stopped paying his bills.

We were assured that we were getting paid, promised the sun in the moon, and we were told to just keep working. We finished the architectural designs, but we didn't hand them over to the client because of the outstanding bills. So the client calls in a huff spitting mad on the Friday of an upcoming long weekend. He demanded the drawings. We informed him that we can't release the drawings with the architect stamp on them until we're paid. He is furious and says that he's only paying half, which is what he's already paid us.

And he threatens to sue us for every reason in the book. The architect says, sure, we can do half, and he hangs up. So we cut off half of every single one of our drawings. As a result, the left half of each finished drawing is complete, however, the right half of the sheet is completely white. This of course also blocks off the title block where a lot of the architectural data in the stamp would be. We issued a flat in PDF and go home for the weekend, taking a half day. Wouldn't you know it? This client has done a private sale of the property

based on our renderings and initial design concepts, and he promised a complete set of architectural drawings to the buyer. The house was supposed to close that Friday. Our boss shielded us from the blowbacks, so we don't know exactly what happened, but yeah, pay your architect. Down in the comments, we have a similar story from Yodon. On a similar note, I knew a company that held a hard drive hostage for the client to pay up. They basically made a million dollar graphics package for a huge award show and TV

network. However, the client decided they didn't want to pay for all the graphics because they had requested over $300,000 in edits. So, after a lot of back and forth where the graphic design company said, you pay for the work, we don't care what you do with it afterwards. It all came down to them saying, hey, so all these graphics you paid for are sitting in a hard drive in our lobby. The hard drive cost $250,000. Guess how much that client paid? Low. That was our slash malicious compliance, and if you like this content, check out my Patreon where I publish extra episodes. Also, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.

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