Bea

Nine days is the part that hurts. Most of these stories are nine days rather than nine hours.

Making certain it has stopped before writing is not a formality. I have watched somebody spend an afternoon composing a careful message while the meter was still running, and the number in their email was wrong by the time it was read.

Asked, and they waived most of it. The message was five lines: what I misconfigured, when it started, that it is stopped now, that it was my fault, and a request for consideration as an individual rather than a company.

No excuses and no argument about whether the pricing is fair. My read is that the honest and short version works precisely because it does not ask them to adjudicate anything.