Spectrum.com review: unreturned bad equipment

I was a time warner customer for last 10 years. We were moving from Austin, TX in September with a new Job. So I cancelled the account with Time Warner.

They told me to return the equipment. I returned the equipment on Sept 15 which they see in their system as returned. I was a customer who always paid his bills ontime and never had any issues for last 10 years.

Later I got letter from TimeWarner saying that I need to pay them $125.00 for unreturned equipment which was on my account. They said they need to do some checks to find out what equipment is that and later told me that what happened was that in summer 2008 my cable modem went bad. A timewarner tech came and replaced the equipment with a new one. He was supposed to take back the old equipment but he never did. I probably trashed it as it was bad when we moved to new home in August 2008. Since it still shows under my account and I need to pay $125.00 or they will report me to credit agencies.

They say they can't do anything unless I pay. I am feeling totally helpless and not sure what to do and that is after 10 years of loyality with them. They are not letting me talk to the supervisor or anybody senior who can understand the real issue, which is their technician's fault.

What my point is that it was their tech and his responsibility to take the equipment back.

I will probably never get Time Warner in my this life if this goes unresolved.

Any help anybody can provide would be very useful.

Thanks,
-Rajiv