Citing extenuating circumstances, T-Mobile dropped the bill, but the collection agency assigned to extract the money from Mr. Mahmood apparently didn’t get that memo.

“Diversified Consultants Inc., is now demanding $1,000 in collection fees,” Mr. Mahmood wrote last week.

Explaining to D.C.I. that the matter had been dropped by T-Mobile apparently didn’t help. Mr. Mahmood, in a series of calls, was instructed to dispute the charge on the D.C.I. Web site. But the link he was e-mailed was for disputing cellphone claims, not the collection fee assessed by D.C.I.

“Now I can’t get through or hear back from the supervisor,” Mr. Mahmood wrote.

The Haggler called D.C.I., which is based in Jacksonville, Fla., and spoke with a gentlemen named Adam Felty. He said he could not discuss the case without the consent of Mr. Mahmood, which Mr. Mahmood provided promptly. Mr. Felty said he would investigate. When silence ensued, the Haggler left a message on Mr. Felty’s answering machine. Then another message. When there was further silence, the Haggler rummaged through the collections agency playbook and left this message:

“Mr. Felty, I am calling on behalf of Hasham Mahmood. This is the third message. Please call at your earliest possible convenience. We would like to resolve this matter without it going on your permanent record. Perhaps we could discuss the terms of a nonpayment plan. You could, for instance, ask Mr. Mahmood to not pay $300. Then he could not pay you another $300 the next month. And so on until all of the money he doesn’t owe is no longer demanded by Diversified Consultants Inc.”

This worked. The next day, D.C.I.’s chief operating officer, Gordon Beck, called and explained that the company had dropped its $1,000 claim against Mr. Mahmood.

What happened? While T-Mobile had indeed forgiven the cellphone charges, Mr. Beck explained, the $1,000 collection fee — which would have been added to the $25,571 and would have gone to T-Mobile, not D.C.I., according to Mr. Beck — remained.

“This was just a simple mistake,” Mr. Beck said, though not a mistake made by D.C.I. He did not elaborate on whose mistake this was. “We have an impeccable reputation for treating customers with honest and integrity.”

Mr. Mahmood’s balance is now, at last, zero. Let’s get to a letter:

Q. On both legs of a United Airlines round-trip flight from Chicago to Paris, I sat in a seat that had some sort of box-shaped metal structure that took up half of my foot room. I could not put my tote bag under the seat, but the main problem was that it was hard to get comfortable with a fraction of the usual room for my legs in an economy row that’s tight already. What annoys me is that United offers extra legroom for an additional fee. So, if I have less than standard legroom it seems I’m entitled to some kind of discount, don’t you think? I wrote United on their complaint Web site requesting a partial refund, but that got me nowhere.

 Mary Ann Lamanna

Omaha

A. It turns out that the box that Ms. Lamanna is referring to contains the in-flight entertainment equipment. And on the Boeing 767, as configured by United, these boxes turn up in every row, under two of the seven seats.

How big is this box? Hey, hey, slow down there, Columbo! Whoa. Just hang on a minute with the probing questions, O.K.? A rep from United, Charles Hobart, could ascertain just one of the boxes’ three dimensions — their width, which is five inches. Height and length? Mr. Hobart said he’d “try to get them.”

This left the Haggler to wonder: What happened to the United employee who measured the box? Did he or she figure out the width and then collapse from exhaustion? Did the company’s only ruler go missing right after that five-inch measurement was taken?

Whatever the dimensions of the box, Mr. Hobart said it did not impede much foot room.

“With the box, the available width is approximately 26.84 inches for the two customers to use,” he wrote in an e-mail. “This offers customers enough space to store two standard carry-on bags under the seat.”

What he is saying, just to be clear, is that there is plenty of foot room for Ms. Lamanna and others in the same seat if you add the space under the seat of the passenger next to them. Because, yeah, a jet is basically a kibbutz with wings. It’s sunny all the time and you just sort of share.

Mr. Hobart pointed the Haggler to a site called seatguru.com, which offers schematic drawings of jets and rates the quality of the seats. What you see, in a page devoted to United’s 767, is that the seats with the electronic boxes are not marked as seats with “some drawbacks.” Fair enough. But the page also says the following: “All B and H seats have limited underseat leg and storage room due to the presence of an entertainment equipment box.”

The Haggler hates to quibble with an expert, but limited in this context sounds a whole lot like a drawback. Regardless, United is unmoved. The passenger who winds up with the electronic box pays the same as everyone in a box-free seat.

It’s pretty simple: The airlines will charge extra when you want to addeth; just don’t expect a discount when they taketh away.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com.

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