To do or not to do
I had to make this tough decision last week. The tough choice facing me was this: to accept or not, money that is not truly yours. So, here is the background story: About a month ago, I had a very minor accident with my car when someone rear-ended my car, on my way to work on a busy Monday morning traffic. There were some minor scratches in the rear bumper and no one was hurt. The guy who hit me was very cool. He apologized and we exchanged our insurance information & left the accident spot.
I talked to my insurance company folks and upon their recommendation, we decided on a rebuild shop to fix it. Over there at the rebuild shop, they said it will take around 4 days to fix it. Since I had taken the rental reimbursement coverage (which means, in cases like this when your car is being repaired, the insurance company will provide you with a rental car whose rental charges will be borne by them), I was provided with a rental car for my use until the time my car was fixed. At the end of 4 days, I went to pick my car from the rebuild shop after it was repaired. The total cost of the repair was 475$ and I had to pay my deductible of 250$ since the insurance company of the guy who hit me, had not yet paid the amount to my insurance company. Apart from that 250$, I had to pay 16$ fee towards the rental car (though the rental car coverage covers everything, due to taxes, I had to pay that 16$ extra). I was promised by my insurance company that I will be sent the check for 250$ once they receive it from his insurance company.
After a few days, I did get the check as promised. But therein, was the problem - the check was not for 250$ and instead, it was for 500$. Looks like they had wrongly sent the check, thinking my deductible was 500$ and the enclosed letter while confirming my doubt, also said that they had closed the file for this case.
Now, I had a difficult decision to make - to do or not to do. Do I go ahead & deposit the check in my name, knowing that I am exploiting somebody's genuine mistake? Or call them up & inform them of the mistake?
It is so strange what the mind tells you to do in such cases. Like, I was trying to convince myself that it is OK to take the extra 250$, bcos there have been so many occasions where I have lost money which I did not deserve to lose & this is God's way of paying me back. It was also weird that this 250$ was coinciding with some of the purchases that I was planning to make - I was planning to buy a non-expensive TV to be kept in my bedroom since my room-mate has a 46" TV in the living room and guess what the budget was? 250$. There was also this around 10K INR that I had to send to India for some expense back home and this 250$ would have come so handily then :)
I even discussed about this with my colleagues at work and they were all like "Phew!! That is an easy one. If we were you, we will go ahead and take it. Or better still, if you feel bad about taking that money, then take us all out for lunch or something :)".
Then, after a long & hard struggle, I made a decision - that I would not use the 250$. It pricked my conscience too much that I decided not to take the money that didn’t belong to me. So, I called them up & informed them of the mistake. They could not say much, except for saying "Sorry for the inconvenience!".
It set me thinking as to what is the reward that one gets for doing something honest like this (slightly recall the scene in Mahanadhi where Kamal laments to Poornam Viswanathan). But when I got the second corrected check, I thought that there was an answer to my question. The second check was for 266$, which included the 16$ that I had to spend for the car rental out of my pocket and something they were not obliged to cover bcos they were due to the taxes out of the rental car. Is God saying something through this?
I talked to my insurance company folks and upon their recommendation, we decided on a rebuild shop to fix it. Over there at the rebuild shop, they said it will take around 4 days to fix it. Since I had taken the rental reimbursement coverage (which means, in cases like this when your car is being repaired, the insurance company will provide you with a rental car whose rental charges will be borne by them), I was provided with a rental car for my use until the time my car was fixed. At the end of 4 days, I went to pick my car from the rebuild shop after it was repaired. The total cost of the repair was 475$ and I had to pay my deductible of 250$ since the insurance company of the guy who hit me, had not yet paid the amount to my insurance company. Apart from that 250$, I had to pay 16$ fee towards the rental car (though the rental car coverage covers everything, due to taxes, I had to pay that 16$ extra). I was promised by my insurance company that I will be sent the check for 250$ once they receive it from his insurance company.
After a few days, I did get the check as promised. But therein, was the problem - the check was not for 250$ and instead, it was for 500$. Looks like they had wrongly sent the check, thinking my deductible was 500$ and the enclosed letter while confirming my doubt, also said that they had closed the file for this case.
Now, I had a difficult decision to make - to do or not to do. Do I go ahead & deposit the check in my name, knowing that I am exploiting somebody's genuine mistake? Or call them up & inform them of the mistake?
It is so strange what the mind tells you to do in such cases. Like, I was trying to convince myself that it is OK to take the extra 250$, bcos there have been so many occasions where I have lost money which I did not deserve to lose & this is God's way of paying me back. It was also weird that this 250$ was coinciding with some of the purchases that I was planning to make - I was planning to buy a non-expensive TV to be kept in my bedroom since my room-mate has a 46" TV in the living room and guess what the budget was? 250$. There was also this around 10K INR that I had to send to India for some expense back home and this 250$ would have come so handily then :)
I even discussed about this with my colleagues at work and they were all like "Phew!! That is an easy one. If we were you, we will go ahead and take it. Or better still, if you feel bad about taking that money, then take us all out for lunch or something :)".
Then, after a long & hard struggle, I made a decision - that I would not use the 250$. It pricked my conscience too much that I decided not to take the money that didn’t belong to me. So, I called them up & informed them of the mistake. They could not say much, except for saying "Sorry for the inconvenience!".
It set me thinking as to what is the reward that one gets for doing something honest like this (slightly recall the scene in Mahanadhi where Kamal laments to Poornam Viswanathan). But when I got the second corrected check, I thought that there was an answer to my question. The second check was for 266$, which included the 16$ that I had to spend for the car rental out of my pocket and something they were not obliged to cover bcos they were due to the taxes out of the rental car. Is God saying something through this?
posted by Filbert at 2:23 PM
8 Comments:
You made a right decision filbert. If you would have kept that...romba nalaki antha uruthal irunthukite irukum...
Ippa your mind is free...right...and your brain can forget about this incident and use the place to store something good...:-)
Filby, I can completely u'stand ur situation. If I were in ur shoes, I would have been equally confused. Especially, the company in question being an insurance company (avange evolo peruku alva kudukurange). But U did the right thing, b'coz at the end of the day, $250 is not worth when compared to sacrificing a guilt free good night's sleep.
Correct-aa sonneenga Bharani. I am sure if I had deposited the first check, it would have bugged me for a long time. I still remember picking up a cellphone from an almost unreachable place (meaning it was lost for a long time). But I just kept it for myself, rather than handing it over to the lost & found area. I still rue that action of mine, though that cellphone is long gone.
True Prasanna, I am a lot relieved after I didnt deposit the first check. In fact, I was even feeling proud in a silly way, as though I have accomplished something :)
Your experience would have been very interesting. Three times your regular salary..Hmmm..let me think :))
You know what, Preethi? I too though the same way about them being an insurance company who get a lot of "undeserving" money. That was one another justification that I was trying to come up with to pacify myself. But in the end, I am glad that I didnt take the extra money.
Have learnt some lessons from past experiences, Sesh. Whenever I have tried to hold on to money that didnt belong to me (no matter whom it was from), it has always happened that I lost equally the same amount of money due to some other source. But may be if I had talked to you before I made the decision, I might have changed my mind :)
Filby, I have usually noticed that if I tried to hold 50 bucks which does not belong to me, I usually end up losing 500 bucks after some time. May be there is no relationship between the two incidents, yet the conscience pricks and kills me. I find it easier to save ourselves from guilty conscience
Subha, in my experiences, even the circumstances leading to myself keeping the extra money & losing my money have been eerily similar. That is probably why I think there IS indeed a relationship between the times when we hold on to undeserving money and when we lose our hard-earned money. So, in my case, apart from the conscience pricking part, the thought that I might lose that money somewhere down the road also probably influenced my decision.
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