Make me pay for a required headset? How about you pay for it?

I didn't really say the title. I posted this over at another sub and someone recommended I post it here.

Several years ago I had an issue with this at a company I worked at (in Utah) for a very short time. It was one of those pyramid marketing style companies (tons of them there). I didn't enjoy the job but needed the money and it paid okay. They required all employees to purchase headsets for the job (answering the phone and placing orders), and the headsets cost around $60~100 for the most basic one. Everyone else paid for it like it was no big deal and it'd been going on ever since they first opened, but I searched and found out that it was against the law.

I confronted the top manager about it, first asking nicely if they could reimburse me for the cost of the headset. He replied rudely that they didn't do that, so the next day I asked again to a different manager, and showed them the law that required them to do so. That manager pretended he didn't know about that law and that it somehow didn't apply to that job. Utah law said they have to either pay for equipment, or re-purchase the used equipment from you once you leave at a fair price.

I ended up quitting that job 3 months later because they repeatedly moved my hours later and later into the late evening when I had originally signed up for a regular morning shift. I'd even threatened to quit "within 2 weeks" because the hours were so bad, but they kept saying HR couldn't do it and that they tried. Funnily enough the day I walked up to a manager and told him "today's my last day" within the very hour they came back to me saying HR magically approved fixing my hours back, but I told them it was too late and they shouldn't treat their employees like this.

After I quit I asked them once more for a refund for the headset and they denied it again. So I did what any rational, revenge-seeking employee would do - I simply submitted a report to the labor department in Utah with all of the required information on the form, waited a few weeks, then received a phone call that they had spoken with the company and fixed the problem. I got a check in the mail for the full amount of the headset, and since they didn't let me return the headset I even got to keep it (which was useless without a phone to put it into). I really hope they got some sort of fine for doing that too, but I never heard anything further. I don't know if they stopped charging employees illegally or not either.