Reflections

I couldn’t resist sharing this personal experience. Has something similar ever happened to you?

We were in the process of refinancing our house at the end of last year. I’d made out the check to pay our property taxes and placed it in a stack of letters to be mailed. Just after the letters had been mailed we were notified that closing would occur the next day. Since we don’t have our tax funds held in escrow, it was going to be a problem to not have proof of the paid taxes. I called the clerk’s office and was told that I could come in person to pay the taxes and get a receipt. When their office received the duplicate payment by mail, she said that they were legally bound to refund any over payment. I thought “Great! Problem solved”. We went on to an uneventful refinance closing.

You can imagine my surprise when a few days later we received a check for $26,111.00. Since this is South Carolina and we don’t own a Biltmore sized home, our property taxes are not that much! Someone (the check writing job is actually contracted out) had mistakenly placed the decimal one digit right of where it should have been! This was just days before Christmas. My husband and I had a quick laugh about it being a great Christmas present, and then I called to explain the error and request a corrected check. The clerk sounded horrified and forwarded my call to a supervisor. The supervisor requested that I mail back the incorrect check, envelope and all. I did, and several days later I received a check for $2,611.10. On it was a Post-It note that read: “Thank you for being so honest!”.

It was sad to sense that my alerting them to the correction was something out of the ordinary. To me, at any time my call would have been the right thing to do.

Just for fun, which, if any, of the comments below do you think capture the thoughts of an ethical person?

• If I cash the check and they later catch the mistake, would I be in trouble?
• If the amount of the error wasn’t that great, I’d be saving everyone the time, effort and cost of correcting it by just keeping it.
• If they were dumb enough to make the mistake, they deserve to lose the money.
• God knew that I really needed the money, so He sent it to me.
• Any amount given in error should be returned.
• If I make a big deal out of it, maybe they will give me a reward.

Linda Gallicchio, Associate Director-Outreach

Rutland Institute for Ethics