Petty Property Manager Makes Tenant Mail a Check for Two Cents, Malicious Compliance Ensues

Property managers, like the bureaucratic tendrils of any given organization, seemingly exist to slow down processes to the point of absurdity. When one redditor received a bill from their apartment manager for a whopping two cents, they did what any normal person would do and went to the manager's office to settle their minuscule debt in person. The manager, on the other hand, chose procedure over rationality and requested a check by mail from the former tenant. A check for two cents. Thus began a most epic war of pettiness.

Posted by Mel Dawn

“Apartment manager 'doesn't take cash' for $0.02 bill. Malicious compliance ensues.” Posted by u/lentesta

The comment section

Many redditors in the comment section had similarly satisfying stories of malicious compliance and revenge on petty bureaucracy.

“If I didn't already have a twin, I'd bet we were separated at birth.” said OP.

“I just want the name of the postcard company. That's useful” said u/lisa_37743.

“I believe it was Lob (lob.com), though I haven't checked in a while. They have an API as well.” replied OP.

“Lol I have a similar story but it's not as much fun. Place I work for has employee discount, but only if you use their in house credit card... Fine. So I use it, I get a bill for the price. I pay the price before the due date. I get a $2 late fee. Ok... I call the support line, I click a few options and the automated system removes the fee and shames me for being late. Fine whatever. I do it again, same things happens. It happens literally every time I use the card. Eventually I get ticked off enough about a robot shaming me when I didn't do anything wrong. Also I literally work there, in IT. I have a small chance of tracking this down and fixing it right? So I call up support and get a human on the line. For the next hour I try to tell him there's a bug with this system. And he tells me it's working perfectly and 'The due date is not the end of the billing cycle and if there's a balance at that time you get a late fee.' Ok... What's the end date of the cycle? It's the same as what's printed as the due date. Apparently they charge fees, then process pending payments. Which is batched up and done monthly apparently. So I can pay a month in advance for a bill I haven't received and probably haven't even spent yet. Or I can get a $2 fee anytime I try to use my employee discount. That was in 2017 I think. Guess how often I've shopped at the place I work since then?” said u/summonsays.

“What's funny is the collections agency bought that $0.11 debt for like $0.01 or $0.02.” said u/TaliesinWI.

“God, this is flooding back to me. I opened an online brokerage account back in the late 90s. They instituted a monthly minimum fee and an account closure fee a few months later. But they didn’t have a minimum withdrawal amount or fee. So I requested about 600 $1 checks and then closed my account. They then sent me a bill for the $20 (or whatever, I forget) account closure fee, which I ignored.” said u/NoMoLerking.

Read the original thread here.