The replacement arrived. A second bill can follow.

How the trap springs

• The clock starts at delivery of the replacement, not at your convenience — and the window is short (about 10–15 days in the plan terms and complaint record).
• The label proves nothing by itself. A dropped package with no scan is graded as not returned. The fee arrives weeks later, on the carrier bill, long after the drop.
• Moving house, a hospitalization, a label that never generated — the system grades the scan, not the story. The story needs the escalation ladder and documentation.

The discipline that prevents it

1. Photograph the damaged phone, the label, and the sealed package before it leaves your hands.
2. Hand it to a staffed counter and keep the acceptance receipt — never an unmonitored drop box for a device carrying a four-figure fee.
3. Track it to delivery and screenshot the delivery scan; carrier detail pages age out.
4. Calendar day 10 from the replacement's arrival. If tracking stalls, call before the window closes, not after the fee posts — and keep the reference number.

If the fee lands anyway

Your dispute is the record: drop-off receipt, tracking delivery, the fee's date. Reply through the carrier (the fee rides the carrier bill) with the scan history attached; if the scans genuinely show non-delivery, the fight is about whose loss a carrier-lost package is — escalate it as a claim-handling complaint (BBB, then regulator) rather than a billing error, and keep the damaged-phone photos: they prove the device you returned existed, in the condition you described, on the day you shipped it.