Here’s my question: If you’d caught it the first time it happened, would you feel differently? It seems that the issue boils down to “I can’t afford that!”. If it had only been, say, thirty bucks, would you have been miffed but mostly ok with it?
Maybe I misread, but I don’t see anything to indicate that the university did not pay the insurance company, just that they didn’t deduct the premium correctly. At my company, we pay the monthly invoice that comes from our provider and then recoup the employee’s portion from their check. Even if we screwed up and took no deduction from payroll, the employee would still have been covered by our insurance since we paid the bill.
Well, of course the amount of money factors into it, for both parties. They wouldn’t care if I only owed, say, $0.50. It would cost just about that to send me a collection notice. And, going back to the unconscionablility case again, I’m sure Williams wouldn’t have had as strong a case if they just wanted to repossess a single chair versus all the furniture she bought. And in my example, if I had really messed up several grades, and given the student an A instead of a D, say, my correction of the error would cause more grief for the student and for me.
The issue is that $900 to a doctoral student represents a hardship. It’s very material to me. Thirty bucks, while still not chump change, would be less of a hardship. It would also mean that the University had only made a slight error, and quickly corrected it. Now, were the circumstances the same, i.e., 100% their fault, I still wouldn’t feel a moral obligation to repay $30 that I had no part in causing to be given to me. But, if I were asked to pay it, I would still think “You fucked up, it’s your responsibility,” but I would pay it just because the cost of the headaches to fight it would not be worth the effort.
What’s happened to me (and others, I’m told) is that the error persisted for months at a time, racking up $900 worth of back payments. Paying that is a major burden, and, if I had a shred of legal support for doing so (which I know I don’t by now), I’d fight it.
I’m a little confused by the question, however. If I walk out of a store with diamond ring, that’s a felony. A pack of gum, a misdemeanor. I’ve committed the same offense–took something that didn’t belong to me–but the value of the item determines how seriously the offense is taken.
Don’t count on this with a government agency. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve written a check for less than a dollar to cover personal use of my state-issued cell phone. They paid me way more than that just to review the bill. They are forced to require me to pay for two reasons- one is that the taxpayers’ money can’t be used to pay for my personal calls, and that’s a factor I don’t think you’re accounting for. The other is that if they don’t require that we pay for all personal calls (even those which do not increase the bill), they don’t have much of a leg to stand on when they want someone to pay for $200 worth of personal calls.
Sure $900 is a hardship for you- but you somehow didn’t notice that you were paid $900 extra over that period of time. You said in your OP
Same money every month. Until they stopped deducting for the health insurance, when your net went up. Whether you were reviewing the wage statements regularly or not, you should have noticed this.
She wouldn’t have. But you should probably read the actual decision if you want to understand it, not the Wikipedia page. What the store wanted to do was repossess everything she bought over a few years because she missed a payment It didn’t have anything to do with Williams being stupid. It may have had something to do with her not completely understanding that the pages and pages of boilerplate included a provision that credited payments in such a way that no item was paid off until the entire account was paid off , but that’s not the same as stupid , nor was it the position you were in. You knew you had to pay X per month, no one tried to trick you. You just didn’t notice you weren’t paying it.
You say you think it isn’t fair , but I’ve got to tell you it seems to me to be the definition of unfair to say that all errors should be decided in the employees favor- if you’re overpaid , you get to keep it and if you’re underpaid the error will be corrected. Seems to me if you were worried about fairness, you;d say that all errors should be corrected - avoids unjust enrichment on both ends
Interesting how people always have different perspectives on things; I understand that my mortgage company has made an arrangement with me to pay my property taxes, and I understand that they should fulfill their responsibility, but I also understand that the consequences of them not doing what they’re supposed to do would affect me negatively, so I make extra efforts to not let that happen. I don’t think I’m unusual in my perspective, of expecting people to do what they’re supposed to do, but keeping an eye on things anyway. It’s a lesson learned the hard way, just like this one.
And no worries about appearing combative; I enjoy a good discussion, too.
I just feel like you’re very stressed out about this (understandably) and it reads to me (which I admit is projecting) that you feel like a dork for missing this, in addition to panicking about the money. I know this feels like a catastrophe, and understand that you wish for it to not be what it is. I understand, also, not feeling like you can cope with this, or that you should have to. But the facts are these: 1) You should have known what was being deducted from your check. This error is a 50-50 thing, IMO. Take your money seriously, don’t count on others to care about it, cuz they don’t. You should know how much you net, and why. 2) Have you discussed how you’re going to repay this? Have you checked it out and know for a fact what your options are? If any payroll person you talk to says anything other than “we will work out a reasonable payment schedule for you and we’re sorry for the error” then escalate. But I think you’re letting your emotions and panic and fear run away with you. Again, totally projecting, but that’s what I see. Well, I’m projecting and I’m coming across as patronizing, I’m sure. Not my intention. This situation sucks.
I can’t speak to the specific legalities, only tp the rightness and wrongness.
If your employer underpaid the insurance, and kept the difference, your employer should be responsible for making good on the underpayments.
If your employer underpaid the insurance, and paid you the difference, you should be responsible for making good on the underpayments.
IMO, you should have a chance to pay back the total sum over a reasonable amount of time, but a lot of bureaucracies simply don’t have the flexibility in their payroll system to make those kind of arrangements.
FYI, virtually the same thing happened to me, and I didn’t become aware of it until I went to an ER, was told I had no health insurance, and was presented with a $7,000 bill. I was very fortunate that my employer actually owned a piece of the insurance company, and was able to reinstate my insurance and cover that bill. But I did have to pay nearly $1300 in unpaid premiums-- immediately. I was offered a loan by my employer to be paid back out of future paychecks, but I opted to pay in full on the spot.
Frankly, I never considered legal options to avoid my moral and financial responsibility.
Get a grip dude. Look at your first sentence up there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in grad school if you don’t understand that if you agree to pay X and you don’t you owe the difference.
This error is being corrected in the manner most favorable to you as the employee- you aren’t being charged interest.
Your posts aren’t very clear, but I’m assuming that the university failed to deduct the correct amount from your paycheck, not that they failed to pay their own portion of your premium.
Assuming I’m understanding this correctly, you’ve basically been loaned $900, interest free. Now, the fact that they just noticed and require you to pay the full amount more or less immediately sucks, but it’s not unreasonable.
Maybe you should stop wasting your time or read what I’ve said numerous times:
I know I owe the $900 legally![SIZE=1]
And you know what? Maybe I am too stupid to be in grad school. I’m clearly stupid enough to keep this motherfucking thread active. I’m sorry for wasting everyone’s time with posts that, according to Really Not All That Bright, are unclear. I must be living in a different dimension, because I thought they were clear.
Everyone wins, okay? I’m clearly out of left field on this, and I’m a bad guy for thinking that that the university should pay for its own fucking mistakes. Clearly, I need to be institutionalized (yeah, I know someone’s going to quote that and go “Yeah dude, read your first sentence. Hur, hur, hur!”). So save your breath.
But, I beg you, before this thread is excised from memory, somebody ***please **tell me the exact ***MORAL ** difference between my changing a student’s grade from an A to a D, say, because of my mistake, and what happened with the insurance. If your answer is one involves money and the other doesn’t, well, I guess I know where your morality lies.
I work at a University in Canada - obviously there are different laws here than in Texas; however, I’ve been on the 'I’ve been underpaid" side of this and when the U discovered it they paid me all my over payments (about $3,000, FWIW).
I’ve also been on the 'I’ve been overpaid" side of things (although I caught it) and they took the deductions off of my next 3 pay-cheques to make up the difference (only one month was missed but they spread it out to ease the pain I guess).
Anyhoo, both of these seem perfectly reasonable to me. However, I assume that you now realize that you really should review your pay stub each month for accuracy.
Edited to add: Ok, I just saw your huge $900 up there. I have to say, if everyone disagrees with you it probably means that you’re wrong, and not that we’re all idiots that you should yell at…
One more and I promise I won’t bother any of you again:
But why shouldn’t they just take 2/3 of my paycheck at once? I took something that didn’t belong to me, right? I was unjustly enriched. I got a $900 loan. I got a free ride. Big Bad Statsman took the poor university’s money. The University is as pure as the driven snow. I’m clearly 100% percent to blame for this. I should get no mercy. I should’ve been on top of my earnings, despite the fact that they change each semester depending on how many classes I teach.
And I should just know that it is an impossibility for insurance to ever decrease. Clearly, I shouldn’t be in grad school because I’m too dumb to realize this, as one poster has said.
There was no intent to steal on your part, and that’s why it’s not stealing. You didn’t realize that this payroll error was occurring. That doesn’t mean you can keep it, but there’s no sense in which you did anything that amounts to a crime.
In practical terms, it likely might cause the university simply to stop making payroll deductions at all. You’d be responsible for paying for your insurance (and FICA, Medicare tax, etc.) directly. The insurance might be slightly more expensive, because payroll deductions are administratively cheaper for the insurer.
Perhaps the university or the insurer would be willing to work out some sort of installment payments with you for the amount due? My sympathies for having gotten stuck in this situation.
If you wanted people to tell you exactly what you wanted to hear, you should have started this thread in MPSIMS. If it happened to me, I would hope they’d offer to work out some kind of payment plan, too - but they are within their rights, legally and morally, not to do so.
ETA: If that’s all you’re asking for, then so be it - but I get the impression you expect the university to foot the bill because it was their error.
Please, please take a breath. This is not as bad, nor as malicious, as you are making it out to be. It’s just a crap error that is not uncommon (this kind of thing has happened in my own company). It is not true that you were unjustly enriched, nor is it true that the university is out to screw you. I know that’s not what you want to hear. But that is the truth. It just is.
All will be well. It’s understandable that you are pissed off. But all will be well.
Statsman, you didn’t intend to “steal” anything. There was no malicious intent on your part - that’s clear to all of us. But the university didn’t intend to screw you over, either. There was no malicious intent on their part that any of us can see.
Sucky as it sounds, this is one of those things that you have to chalk up to the great equalizer of life: Shit Happens. Don’t let it take control of your emotions to the point that it takes control of your whole life, and you start (digitally) shouting at everyone and getting as insulted as possible and posting melodramatic statements about how you’re too dumb for grad school.
The problem here is that the university is not the only one that made a mistake. It is also your error for not checking your monthly balance. I know, I know, you just get a check and pay your bills and don’t pay attention to the actual amounts but that leaves you with 2 scenarios, the first where your spending didn’t change and you now have an extra $900 in your account from the overage you hadn’t accounted for or the second where you all of the sudden had $900 extra dollars that you spent (whether it was on charity donations or beer and pizza doesn’t matter) without noticing. Either way the error is just as much yours for not monitoring your finances closely as it is theirs for not monitoring their finances closely.
In fact I would say that since the difference is so much larger to you that you bear that much more responsibility for not noticing the error. Like you said, the university has millions and $900 is just a drop in the bucket but it represents 2/3 of a paycheck to you. I think that this means you should have noticed much sooner than the school. And as far as the grades go I don’t think it is a fair comparison because the professor that enters an incorrect grade loses nothing if the grade stays exactly as it is. It isn’t like the professor’s check is docked for a keystroke error in the system. Your error does cost the school and the taxpayers who fund the school $900 if you don’t pay it. Now, if you signed up for a plan at a certian price point and then 9 months later they told you they were wrong and the cost was really much higher so you owed $900 then I would say you had a point, but as you knew exactly what you were supposed to pay and exactly how much you should have been receiving in your check I think that makes this just as much your error as it was theirs.
It sucks for you no matter why it happened for sure and I understand that. I learned the difference between a copay and co-insurance the hard way on my first hospital visit after leaving my parent’s insurance plan and having an unexpected $600 hospital bill one day. It was absolutely my fault for not having a better understanding of my plan and I bitched and moaned about it but I paid it just the same. I think we all deal with this kind of thing at one time or another in our lives unfortunately.
I’m breaking my promise not to bother anyone anymore. Sorry.
I didn’t say that at first; **sinjin **did, albeit in not so many words. I was just agreeing with him/her.
And thanks, pbbth, for being, what, the second poster to humor me by addressing the grade thing. I’m not being sarcastic; I’m actually relieved to see that I didn’t just dream up the fact that I’ve posted that example several times.
Okay, so I don’t lose money (I guess it is all about money) by letting the student slide. But what about my integrity (which is really important in academia)? At my school, there are some classes that require a student to get a B or better in order remain in the program (accounting is one of them, in my college). By letting that C or D student into a B or better program, am I not doing some harm? What about the other students who didn’t get the benefit of my slip-up? They had to work just as hard or harder for their grades, but they don’t get that benefit.
Now, a natural response would be, “Messing up one student’s grade isn’t going to bring down the whole system.” But couldn’t that argument be said for the $900? I guess it is all about money, and I mean that sincerely. I think I’m a little smarter now.
By the way, I have been graciously allowed to repay the money in installments, starting with my summer money. I’m paying back the $900; any further discussion is purely philosophical at this point.
Statsman, the moral difference is not that it involves money, per se. The moral difference is that it involves a material good versus a piece of data. Morally, it would make no difference if it were dollars, or kumquats, or paper clips.
The university already gave a set amount of a tangible thing to the insurer on your behalf. The university deserves to be reimbursed. Creating a data point does not establish a tangible good inequity between you and a student.
Now, on to your further point that grades are used as criteria for admission/ retention for certain programs. If the program were so competitive that one grade in one course would allow this student to enter/ advance AND take the last open slot away from someone else, then the moral thing to do would be to change the grade to what the student actually earned.
I would think in most cases, however, the grades from a few courses at a time would be considered and one letter grade in one course would not take space away from another student who deserved it.
I am not a professor, a student, a payroll clerk or an ethicist. My concepts of morality have not been endorsed by any recognized religious authority. YMMV.
