Sending in the debt collector

Yes, OK, when someone's just a scoff law then you do have to take action. If they refuse to pay the debt owed to you then you've a right to send in a debt collector. Seems reasonable enough really, doesn't it? That people should pay you what they owe you?

However, it can be taken a little too far:

Austrian authorities sent a debt collector to a man's house after he underpaid his trash collection bill by 36 euro cents, about 50 U.S. cents, a newspaper said on Thursday.

The man, from a village in Lower Austria province, told Kronen Zeitung that he had accidentally overlooked the 36 cents after the decimal place on his bill for 236.36 euros ($315).

That's some trash bill there, ain't it?

But then it shows the problem with bureaucracies. They're so concerned with dotting the i's and crossing the t's that there's no room for someone to use common sense and just say "Hang on a moment....."