Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tiger Beer]

What is the best way to resolve this.. ??

Through my old employer, I organized to have an internet service give me a line thoughout my teaching contract. I paid all the bills, finished the contract, and at the end of my teaching there.. I went in and asked my Korean supervisor to please turn off the service (as obviously I was leaving). I gave him my account, the phone number, and everything else, and I left a few days later.

Now its been a year.. and that Internet account was NEVER TURNED OFF! So some other foreigner came in, probably got free Internet Service for a year (and definetely had no interest in turning it off).

So now I'm wondering whats the best way to go about this. Obviously I'll have to go back to my employer this week to see what they can do to resolve this.

I have a feeling I'll have to either a) pay for it all, or b) get my employer to pay for it (as its obvious I wasn't using it in their apartment while gone), or c) just have the service cut off (and the free internet receiving foreigner can buy his own Internet) and I won't pay it - leaving the bill to go forever to the apartment) or d) what else?

[Kalhoun]

Get the other foreigner to pay for it. S/he resides there~ therefore responsible for it.

[Derrek]

HAPPENED TO ME TOO!!

My employer forgot to turn it off after he promised me he would.

My credit card got charged for it.

[peppermint]

you both have been here long enough to do this stuff for yourselves.. .

[Derrek]

It happened in my first year.

I learned then NEVER to trust a former employer to do ANYTHING they say they will. Always double-check on them... triple-check, in fact.

[JongnoGuru]

Tiger, Tiger, Tiger....

Only been back a few weeks and yet Korea's already taking a bite out of your donkey, is it? But then, you didn't really return because you never really left.

Your experience serves as yet another example of one of the minor eternal truths that, while perhaps not deserving of "sticky status", at least warrants a few words of caution:

Once initiated, services and subscriptions in Korea often have an uncanny resilience to the efforts of mere mortals to cancel them.

Like the fiend in a Hollywood slasher film, subscriptions & services in Korea never truly die until a female or member of a minority group steps out from behind the crowd and blasts them between the eyes.

And it isn't just a function of newbie first-yearishness, or a problem readily ascribable to language/communication barriers. (Everyone I work with is or speaks Korean, yet we have had many such hassles.) It does, in fact, defy logic or reason. If I were to write a book about the countries I've lived in, this topic could take up a page or two of the "Korea" chapter.

So either take this object lesson on board and prepare yourself in some cases to fight to the bitter end, shout on the phone, physically visit offices and get all ugly and menacing.... or don't sign up for the service/subscription. Make an employer, a landlord or some other Korean do it instead.

[Derrek]

There is truth to what guru says.

I had to cancel a bank account to keep a Sky satellite from continually taking money from my bank account after I had cancelled and been assured it would happen no more.

To this day, they still send me mail saying I owe 9,628 won. That was nearly a year ago.

I have talked to people there, and it still happens continually.

[shakuhachi]

Unfortunately you dont have a leg to stand on. The account was in your name and simply making having made a request to your former employer to cancel the service doesnt mean he is responsible for it because he didnt. That is common sense in Korea or indeed any country.

[Tiger Beer]

Yeah, I have a feeling I really can't do anything.

The foreigner who got my apartment basically got it with 250,000 won's worth of FREE INTERNET for a year! Damn that sucker!

I'll still go down to my employer this week.. and I will DEFINETELY cancel the service (probably to the shock of the current tenant of my old place).

Its one of those things that I just assumed they would HAVE to cancel it.. as the apartment is in their name.. and they'd obviously get the bills.. and obviously recognize that they need to cancel it just as they said they would cancel it.

All that being said.. a good lesson learned.. your employer WILL NOT do the things they say they will do - as if I didn't know that one already.

But what the hell.. I'll give my old employer hell just like I did back when I worked for them.. one more time!

[margaret]

This happened to me in Miguk, not in Korea. I left at job in a chiropractor's office doing massage. I had bought an ad in the the phone book the previous year. Even though both the doctor and I said I didn't want to renew the ad, they did anyway and kept charging me for it every month. It took months of calls and a letter to get them off my back.
Margaret

[JongnoGuru]

[Tiger Beer]

[Dawn]

[JongnoGuru]

"Free" Internet is increasingly laid on as part of the standard conveniences in Korea these days, from the dinkiest and grimiest of goshiwons to the swankiest of serviced apartments.

Stories like Tiger's would behoove anyone who can to try and make Internet service (in the landlord's or the employer's name) a "must-have" contract item. I know I'd press like hell for it.

[John Henry]

Wait, but nobody's paid the bill in a year, and the service is still connected? Don't they shut it off if nobody pays the bill in a few months?