Nobody in this thread has said that. Your employer screwed up and gave you too much money. Big difference.
And like a good little boy I didn’t return it. As Markxxx said, I was profiting by error.
I already got a response from one of the free legal advice sites Gfactor mentioned: Here it is:
(bolding mine)
Keeping something that doesn’t belong to you isn’t stealing?
Anyway, I know I’m wrong by the letter of the law. But I wish someone could convince me why it wouldn’t be a good idea, from a moral standpoint, to make the law such that all payroll errors, not the result of active deception by the employee, should be in the favor of the employee. That would accomplish two things: 1). There would be fewer fuckups, because people would have an incentive to get things right, and 2). the employee who makes a pittance compared to the university wouldn’t feel the pain of an unexpected $900 bill that was due 100% to the university’s negligence.
Or take my grocery store example. The fact that I bring a $10 item to the register means I’m entering into a contract to buy said item for $10, right? If, by error, I’m charged $7.50, and I don’t know it (maybe I’m buying a whole basketful of shit), the grocery store is within its rights to charge me $2.50 extra on a future purchase, since I owe that, right? Sure, the store would be right by the letter of the law, but would any store do this? Probably not; it would be damn sure it wouldn’t happen again, though, because mistakes add up. It would probably chalk that loss up to a lesson learned.
$900 is nothing to a 30,000+ student research university with a $736 million endowment. The university won’t grind to a halt because of $900. Yeah, I got some “free” healthcare out of the deal. But if the university had to eat that money, I guaran-damn-tee you that such errors would be very rare.
I teach; I see that I transposed a grade on an assignment, giving the student a 97 instead of a 79, and because of this, the student by all rights deserves a B, not an A- in my class. Grades have already been submitted. If I wanted to be a real jackass, I could probably change that grade to a B if I wanted because, hey, I fucked up but he shouldn’t get a free pass, right? Would any teacher do this? I don’t know of any, even the real hard-asses. What’s the difference?
Your original statement was
“Under the “you stole insurance” idea, which I guess I did…” (bolding mine)
That is, you are accusing yourself of a past impropriety. That is not what proponents of the “you need to give it back” theory are doing. They are saying, now that you do know, you have a moral obligation at some time in the future to give it back.
Now personally, I would say that, given that they didn’t catch the error for X months, you should get at least X months to sort it out again. But that’s straying into IMHO territory - I don’t know anything about the legalities of the situation.
ETA: Oh, I see we’re now in IMHO anyway. Well, in that case, let me also add that I think “You should have seen that your insurance deduction went down. We all know insurance never goes down, so you should have told us immediately.” is a complete crock, and clearly an attempt by the administration to blame-shift something that’s not at all your fault. However, you still ought to ultimately give the money back. Sorry.
So, if I see that a student got an A- instead of a B because of an error I made, by all rights, I should change that grade, right? They are getting something (the 4 points for an A) that they didn’t earn, right?
well, if it actually made a difference to anything, like say admission to a class the next year, then yes, because your mistake disadvantages all the people (the 5 or 6 people, or whatever number) who look like they did worse than mistake-recipient and actually did better.
In practise, 99% of the time I’d put that into the “is taking a pencil home from the office stealing” category - ie, in principle yes but in practise it’s trivial enough that nobody gives a damn.
Imho, they should do it. Imagine these scenarios:
- They accidentally gave you less money than you were supposed to get.
- They accidentally took out less money for taxes than you requested.
- They accidentally gave you more money than you were supposed to get.
In all of these cases, when the mistake is found, the person who was the beneficiary of the mistake has to pay the difference. You still received the benefit of health insurance but you were accidentally not charged. If the case was opposite (they accidentally took out more than what you were supposed to get taken out) they would have refunded the difference, right?
From a moral standpoint, I don’t see why the employer shouldn’t be the one paying it back. They essentially had a contract saying they would pay the insurance company as they were supposed to, and they did not. It was their error, therefore they must pay for the mistake.
Other dopers would have to explain if my idea has any legal merit.
BTW, every school I’ve ever been to will fix your grade if the error hurt you, but leave it alone if it helped you. I’ve always considered that the most moral option.
In all three cases, I would expect the employer to fix it, since they are the ones actually giving the money. They are the ones in charge of handling it. They are the ones that screwed up. What’s the point of having them do it for me if I have to double check everything they do?
No, if the employer overpays you, you are supposed to pay it back. If they underpay you, they must pay the difference.
If an employee receives something they didn’t pay for, they have to pay for it or give it back.
It’s common sense.
Example: My bank was bought out by another bank in 1996. All customers had to go in and get their accounts changed to the new bank. When I went in, I had an account balance of $100. The person changing my account accidentally entered $1600.
- If I had taken that money and spent it all, could I say, “Since it’s the bank’s fault, I’m not responsible for it?” Obviously I’m responsible for it.
- If I had spent it all, would I have to pay it back or go to jail for it? Obviously, I would.
The bank manager joked with me about why I didn’t keep it. I said, “Well, $1k is a felony around here, you coulda gave me like 200 or something.”
It seems clear to me that you should be paying the money back, having received the benefit. If you originally declined the insurance and they erroneously included you in the coverage, I’d think otherwise, but all that happened is that they undercharged you.
Because it was their error, and providing that you did not happen to notice it, I don’t think they should be able to levy some kind of additional fine or penalty. But I’m not hearing that; all I hear is that they want to be paid for what you wanted and they gave you.
It is another issue how aggressively they should pursue payment. I think it would be understandable if you did not have the funds available to pay the whole difference immediately, because many of us tend to adjust our spending to work well with what we understand our budget to be. This is probably especially true for students, school not being a very high paying gig. I think they should be most flexible in setting up a gradual payment scheme, like maybe over a year or two.
So, you owe the money, and should pay it back. Whether Texas law has some provision that allows the temporary beneficiaries of clerical errors to make the benefit permanent I don’t know, but, why would you want to? It’s an ill-gotten gain, isn’t it?
Two things.
First, the store example isn’t a good one. A better analogy would be that you buy something at the store for $100, agree to pay $100 with a credit card , and the charge is mistakenly processed for $10. The credit card company will absolutely correct this mistake when it is discovered. The reason the store doesn’t correct the error in your example is because once they discover that the register is charging $7.50 for the $10 item, they still don’t know *who * was undercharged.
Second, and this is a practical argument not a moral one, but it would make life less convenient for a lot of people. I think, on some level, you believe this is the employer’s responsibility because your employer pays for some or most of your insurance premium. That’s not the case for many payroll deductions- the payroll deductions I know of at my employer include union dues, payments for discounted auto, home, life and disability insurance through unions and professional associations, deposits to 529 plans, deferred compensation, pension contributions, payments on pension and deferred compensations loans, and so on. In fact I can even have essentially a partial direct deposit- I can have a payroll deduction for a fixed amount slightly less than my net pay and get a very small check. In which of these situations do you believe the employer should eat the mistake ?
1 My net pay is usually $1000, $200 of which is usually deposited to a bank account through payroll deduction. My employer fails to deduct the $200 , and gives me a check for $1000. Do you think I should be able to demand that they deposit the $200 in my savings account while retaining the full $1000 value of the check?
2 My net pay is usually $1000. I have a $200 deduction for health insurance and the rest is directly deposited into my checking account. Payroll screws up , and I receive an $800 paycheck with no deposit to my checking account, Should they have to make the $800 deposit while allowing me to keep the $800 check?
The answer should be the same as for the health insurance- if your employer should be required to pay your share of your health insurance premium without being able to recover it , they should be required to make those payments without being able to recover them. Pass a law saying that I ,as an employer, will have to make any payments which were incorrectly not deducted, and the first thing I do is end payroll deductions and direct deposit. My employer gains no benefit from my ability to make those payments by payroll deduction. I get a benefit (convenience, discount, the ability to take out a loan), and the entities receiving payments get a benefit (dependable payments) but why would any employer take on a potential liability if the employer gets no benefit?
It’s not stealing in the classic sense, but you can’t expect to keep it either in most cases. Suppose you grab the wrong suitcase at the airport. When you get home, you realize your mistake. Do you think there is a moral case for keeping it? Finders keepers is stretched beyond its limits in a case like that.
A case of an overpayment is a little different because there are wealth effects involved. You may have already spent that money in good faith; you may not be able to repay it, or need to repay it in small installments. For example if Social Security pays you money you aren’t entitled to, you can request a waiver of overpayment recorvery. Form SSA-632 | Request For Waiver Of Overpayment Recovery Or Change In Repayment Rate You owe that money back, but there are ways to convince the SSA that it’s not fair to insist that you repay it.
I’ll-gotten gains aren’t stealing?
I guess I have to defer to Gfactor’s definition of stealing, then. My definition has always been “taking something that doesn’t belong to you.” Full stop. I never thought intent had anything to do with it. Ignorance fought, I guess.
And so far, only a couple of people have addressed my grade example, and I thank them, but what I’d like to see is how exactly that situation isn’t like the insurance deduction one. Other than arguing that “money is more important than grades”, which a lot of students think these days, I don’t see a moral (not legal) difference.
Again, I see that I screwed up and gave the student a 97 instead of a 79, and after grades are posted do I notice this. The difference will make the student get a B instead of an A-. By the letter of the “law” (in this case, the syllabus that I make up), I must change that grade, because the A- is, to quote Napier, an “ill-gotten gain.” Would you support my changing the grade?
The way I see it, if my employer can fuck up and bear no consequences, I should be able to do the same. But would any, any, professor do this? Maybe 1/1000 would. But even the most assholish people I know would say, “Whoops! I fucked up. Student got lucky.”
To me, the moral (not legal) difference between the insurance mistake and the grade mistake is that the former involves money. If that’s the moral difference, well, that confirms a lot about society, doesn’t it?
Doreen, I believe it’s the employer’s moral (not legal) responsibility to eat the cost of an error that is 100% their making. We aren’t anywhere near equals in financial power. I’m sure they bought $900 worth of pens and pencils this week; $900 is almost 2/3 of what I make in a month. Yes, if the monarch gives the peasant an extra loaf of bread by mistake, I’m not going to weep for the monarch.
As to your situation 1, demanding the extra $200, knowing full well that you’re not owed that (that’s the key), would not be right. That would be like asking for a free 6-pack of beer while checking out at the grocery store. In that case, you know you are defrauding the entity. Big moral difference.
In my case, I didn’t check my earnings statement online religiously, as I was paid salary. I just checked to see if the money was deposited into my account. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have been alarmed at the decreased insurance rate. It might be due to an increased employer share. Maybe there is a reduced amount for dirt-poor doctoral students. I don’t know. I’m not an expert in insurance. At any rate, I wasn’t actively seeking to defraud anyone. My only guilt in this is continuing to live after the new Banner system was implemented.
Maybe great–or depressed (me) and recovering (you)–minds think alike? 
This experience has shown me that what is moral and what is legal are sometimes two very different things. Ideally, they should be the same. The problem, as I see it, is treating the University and me as equals, when in reality, the University is orders of magnitude more powerful and wealthy. My “ill-gotten gain” of $900 is not, from a utility perspective, equal to a $900 loss for the University. It’s chicken feed to them.
Gfactor pointed out a good example of where moral triumphs over legal, in the case of Social Security. I didn’t know that one could request a waiver of having to pay back extra money received. Another example is that if I die, I"m discharged from my Stafford loan obligation. My “estate” isn’t responsible. What is the legal reason for that? I owe that money, do I not? Even if I die, that doesn’t change the fact that in life, I got something that I need to pay for. Why shouldn’t the government go after everything I have to get at least some of the money back? The answer is, someone, somewhere, thought that the legal right to every cent is superceded by the moral idea that picking someone’s bones clean isn’t good.
You seem hung up on two ideas. First, that by receiving this money, you were somehow stealing from the university. I don’t think that’s the case, and I don’t think anyone else was suggesting that (although read up on unjust enrichment).
Second you seem to think that the moral thing would be for the university to eat the difference because they’re richer than you. Unfortunately, I don’t think things work that way. If they did, why couldn’t some homeless guy come in to your house and make himself at home? Surely even in your status as a poor grad student, you’re still richer than some others. Or, if this was the basis by which we decided such disputes, we’d just start by auditing each party and ruling in favor of the poorer one.
I don’t think your example is a reasonable analogy. The homeless guy is trespassing, or breaking and entering if I don’t invite him in. If I invite him to live with me, then I can’t just kick him out because I don’t like him anymore, apparently (see post 228 of this thread for a side discussion of this issue).
Second, I’m not advocating that the University should be responsible in 100% of the cases. If I intended to deceive them, and there were evidence that I did so (and they clearly don’t think I did or they would be charging me with something), then they would have a right to, at the least, recover the $900. In that case, they made no mistake; I gave them bad input to their system. GIGO. In my case, they provided the bad input. I see that as a big difference.
Although the doctrine doesn’t really apply to me, I thought this was interesting from Wikipedia:
Unconcionability in this case, to my pea brain, seems to relate to the fact that the terms in the contract were so difficult to understand that it wouldn’t be fair to Williams to repossess the furniture, even though the contract said so. Basically, even though someone agrees to something, if it’s unfair, it may not be enforceable.
Okay, doesn’t really apply to my case, except that the idea of “fairness” despite what is written and agreed to in a contract is to be found somewhere in the law. It seems the reasonable thing would be to take back all of Williams’s stuff; she agreed to pay X, she didn’t, and the furniture company by contract should be able to repossess. Is the furniture company supposed to administer an IQ test to everyone who buys furniture?
In my case, I agreed to pay $X total, and I paid X-$900. The contract itself, I guess, wasn’t hard to understand, although the minutia and complexity of insurance premiums confuses even professors on this campus. Maybe I’m dumb and don’t know that it’s impossible for insurance premiums to go down. Isn’t Williams equally dumb by not reading the contract? How do we determine the level of dumbness that’s required before some court says “Well, although you signed it, no one could expect you to understand it, so it was unconcionable for Big Bad Co. to enforce the contract?”
These aren’t rhetorical questions, by the way. I’m really trying to see what the difference is.
You didn’t take something that wasn’t yours; you were given something that wasn’t yours, they discovered that they gave you something they had no right to give you, and now they’d like it back, please.
I don’t know how old you are, statsman, but people have to look after their own accounts, and it doesn’t take very long as an adult to learn that mistakes happen. I’ll give you a current example - the property taxes for our house are collected by our mortgage company and submitted to Calgary city hall on our behalf. I had to fax our tax bill to the mortgage company, check to make sure the fax was received, and put a note in my calendar to check within a month after the taxes are due to make sure the mortgage company actually paid them, because things happen, and the City of Calgary WILL penalize me if the taxes aren’t paid on time, even though a third party is supposed to be responsible for paying them on my behalf. The final responsibility is mine, and mine alone. This is just the world we live in. You’re raging against the machine, and while I understand and sympathize with your frustration, at the end of the day, you’ll still be paying $900 and be responsible to check your pay stubs carefully in the future.
I’m 27, and for the record, I think the mortgage company should be held 100% liable for a service they are providing. I know the world is an awful,cruel, unfair place where everyone should take care of themselves and the stupid should just be fucked.
But…
The law occasionally, occasionally, says, “You know what? That’s not fair.” I’m past the idea that I can get out of this $900; what I want to know now is the legal level of stupid that I need to possess before the law says “That’s unconcionable.” Williams, in the case I cited above, met that level of stupid, even though the contract spelled out what would happen if she didn’t pay for all the furniture. The Judge said, to me, that even though she agreed to it, she didn’t possess enough knowledge to know what she was getting into. She was legally stupid enough to get out of a contract.
Missed the edit window:
By the way, don’t you have some sort of Social Security equivalent up in Canada? There is a sizable portion of people down here in the states that think that if someone didn’t plan for retirement, well, that’s too bad; let 'em die. They weren’t “taking care of their own accounts” to use your words. But somewhere, someone said, “Even though you ought to be responsible for yourself, the government will give you a little bit if something happens.”
Please note that I"m not trying to be combative with you. I really like you and your posts are always helpful. But my point is that there are exceptions made all the time to the “take care of yourself” rule of the jungle. It’s just where we make those exceptions that is up for debate.