It’s wrong to keep the money.
But I absolutely understand the impulse to want to screw over a cable or internet service provider that has caused me a ton of trouble due to horrible products and incompetent customer service.
BTW, I’d hold onto the check at least another 2 months to make sure they don’t charge you again. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if next month you get a bill for services you’ve long since cancelled, then you can apply the $135 to the new charges.
You KNOW the credit does not exist. You KNOW it was generated as an error. You can put the onus on them to explain that to you – pointlessly, since you’re already fully aware of it – but neither your demand for an explanation nor your arbitrarily set deadline will give you any right to the money. Because it isn’t yours and they don’t owe it to you.
You can dress it up however you want. You can give them as many chances as you like to STOP you from stealing, but stealing is in fact what you are contemplating, and nothing they do or don’t do (short of informing you the money is yours to keep) will make you anything more than a thief in this scenario.
I also don’t understand why you would take the time to write them a letter, sent certified mail, demanding a written response as a condition of NOT cashing the check, but you can’t be arsed to just send them the check back with a note that says Hey, this is a mistake, there shouldn’t be a credit on the account. Problem solved.
Or you could just throw the check away. Problem also solved. Granted, neither scenario nets you 135 small, but neither makes you a thief either.
Reading this thread has caused me stress and wasted 5 minutes of my time. I demand compensation from one DudleyGarrett to the tune of $35,000. I will settle for $135.
The don’t owe you the money. You know it but are using the excuse that you had bad service as justification for keeping something that you know isn’t yours.
Cash the check. I hope there’s a clause buried in the super small print that says if you cash it you are locked into 98 months of service at $129/month and they will sue your ass off if you don’t pay.
Not gonna happen, but karma would be sweet.
An anecdote, true story.
I went to the bank to deposit my check. I was running short of time, it was my lunch hour and I still had to get to the post office to mail a package from an online transaction. I held $40 cash out of the check. Seems like it was taking forever, and I still had a line at the post office to get through and time would be short if they didn’t hurry.
Got my money, got to the post office, was mailing the box and went to pay when I noticed there was $50 in the little cash envelope…not $40.
OK. I was stressed, running all over town on my lunch hour to do errands. I was inconvienanced, I would have had more time if the bank would have had more tellers working during lunch. To take the $10 back to the bank was going to be a further inconvenience. I should just keep it, it was their fault, I had done nothing wrong.
So what did I do? I took the fucking $10 back across town, wiping out every last second of my lunch hour. Why? Because it wasn’t MY FUCKING $10!
Why? Because, even though I could make a good case (in my own mind) for the $10 making up for my inconveniences, the ETHICAL thing to do was to give it back.
Look, I get that it’s a pain in the ass. You’ve dealt with this issue for months. Who said doing the right thing was easy?
Why don’t you just do what you’re doing to do anyway, cash the check and quit wasting our time.
This sums it all up. Why ask for an explanation for a mistaken credit when it is abundantly clear (you admitted it up front) that it is, in fact, mistaken? You’re trying to rationalize your way around being dishonest, but in the end, you know you’re being dishonest.
Why waste their time and your time? If you are committed to stealing it, just steal it. And, to reiterate, it is stealing because the money isn’t yours, you know whose it is, and you want to keep it for yourself.
I agree with this. All of this rationalization for why he’s owed the money makes no sense because the price of being stressed out by an inconsiderate faceless corporation is $135.00…ahh. I’d also prefer someone who admitted that they were stealing. At least you know where you stand with them.
You seem to be the only one who thinks so.
Of course you did.
You should have just said that in the first place, rather than asking, “What do I do?” You didn’t want us to tell you what to do; you just wanted someone to sanction what you had already decided to do.
In other words, you don’t want anyone to post unless he agrees with you.
I did not call you a thief. In fact, others have, so I don’t know why you singled me out for this particular accusation.
If you consider doing to others as you would have them do to you to be an “empty declaration”, then I don’t know what else to say to you. That’s what morality boils down to. I can’t think of a more fundamental way of explaining it.
Pretend this error was on the part of the IRS…would you try to keep it then?
Things like this can and will come back to haunt you. $135 is probably not worth them making a stink of when they figure it out, but all it would take is for them to basically demand it back and IIRC you are obligated to return it. Could very well be they applied someone elses payment to your account and refusing to believe some other poor guy paid his bill.
What if the company was not DirectTV or whatever, but Haliburton?
Jeeze, I can’t believe the masochistic “ethics” the majority of you are espousing. The company’s sloppy incompetence should only cost the customer, and never themselves directly?
The OP asked about the ethical thing to do. It doesn’t become any less ethical because you consider it masochistic or because it involves the customer not benefitting.
Why is it ethical for someone to go out of his way to correct the incompetence of a company when that very incompetence has only cost him trouble up until then, and he’d be better off not doing so?
I echo all the other posters who’ve said you’re being unethical.
Keeping money that doesn’t belong to you is wrong.
It doesn’t matter how you try to excuse it; either you have personal standards or you don’t. (I took a part-time job once as a hard-up student. At the end of the job, they paid me too much. I immediately pointed it out. I felt good about myself.)
You are fully entitled to make a politely-worded complaint to the company, who clearly have behaved badly. If they have any competent managers, they will apologise and offer some reparation. (Perhaps a credit on their package…)
In our capitalist society, that’s how competition works. You find out the duff companies and use the others.
It already cost the company. They paid for the installer to go there and install the equipment, and they paid however many people talked to Dudley on the phone, plus incidental costs like gas and wear and tear on equipment. And if they continue to provide poor service, they will lose too much profit and go out of business. That’s as it should be. If they are incompetent, it will cost them. You don’t have the right to declare yourself arbiter and take money from them.
Because it’s about his ethics, not the company’s.
As I already posted, a worthwhile company will apologise for any incompetence. If the facts merit it, you can sue them. What you can’t do legally is keep the money.
Not only do I want compensation for the stress of trying to understand WTF Dudly is looking for, I think one of you lost my pants.
$54 million, please. From whoever.
If you stole $135 from Halliburton, do you think it would come out of the pocket of any of the corrupt fat-cats who are making shady back-room deals to squander tax dollars? Hell no - they’d lay off a thousand innocent low-level employees before it would touch anyone who’s actually guilty of anything. What good would that do?
Because ethics are about the right thing to do, not about convenience.
And just because the company has caused him trouble does not entitle him to the money.
On a more practical level, posters have already given reasons why this would be a bad idea (keeping it).
DudleyGarrett, if you have any question about what to do, re-read this paragraph from Jodi:
They are mailing you a check. If you have a ‘check-burning party’ or throw darts at it, you’re fine. If you scan it and, after adding rude photoshopping, post it to the internet, then you are OK. Hell, roll tobacco up in it & smoke it and you’ll still probably survive.
But the minute you endorse the back of it & try to deposit it, either to your account or to charity, you don’t have a leg to stand on (morally, ethically, or legally). And if you get called on it, smart & snappy answers aren’t going to amuse/impress your judge. BTW, while I’m no lawyer, someone who is might think that your postings in this thread could be considered fair game in discovery at any trial concerning the matter at a later date.
So, still want to sell your honesty, your integrity and your clean criminal record for a measley $135?
PS- Larger companies like Satellite TV providers generally have at least one attorney sitting around on salary getting paid if they litigate or not (to cover things like ‘theft of service’ cases). What would a defense lawyer (the one that you’d potentially have to hire to represent you) charge you…? Or if it came to that, would you be defending yourself?
Just rip it up…