Not quite a month ago, I was interviewing with a company in California. At some point, they said they’d like me to fly out and take a look at the premises, company, etc. and see what I think. I said that would be fine and agreed on a date for me to come up. They booked the flight, a hotel room, and a rental car for me and all was off and running.
As it turns out, they offered me the position, but I felt it wasn’t the right opportunity for my future so I turned down the job a couple of days after I returned home. They were nice about it and said that they would keep the position open for another four weeks should I change my mind.
Tonight I got my credit card bill in the mail and found that there was a charge on there for both the hotel room and the rental car - as the person staying there and using the car, I had to present a credit card. I thought I remembered being told that there would be no charges on my credit card. I was under the impression these things would be covered by the company for which I was interviewing.
Is it common practice for a company to reverse charges as a result of me not taking the position? Or is this a clerical error? Is it possible I was wrong and that I was financially responsible for these things all along? The flight was fully paid for and I haven’t heard a word about that since I landed.
What do you fine dopers suggest? Should I just let it go and eat the charges? Or should I call the places and ask about the situation. It’s really not that big of a deal, but two hundred bucks is two hundred bucks.
First of all I have never heard of a situation where the company would make you pay for part or all of the interview if they had originally agreed to pay for the trip and then you turned the job down. Their offer of keeping the position open for several weeks would lend further evidence to the fact that the last thing they would do is renege on their offer.
I suspect that what happened is that 1) the hotel and rental car company were supposed to direct bill the company for the charges and they screwed up or 2) (and more commonly) you would pay the charges for hotel, rental car, meals, etc and then submit an expense account to the company for reimbursement.
Check with the company you interviewed with.
I’ve never heard of reimbursing expenses being conditional on accepting the job. Maybe some companies do that. I’d think they’re not all that common though. Usually, the cost of bringing in interviewees is an expected part of hiring. However, many times I’ve interviewed I’ve had to submit a report for reimbursement. Some times companies will pay up front, but many aren’t set up to do that. My company expects candidates to submit an expense report because we reimburse things like milage to the airport and parking which vary.
Call the HR person who arranged your interviews (or the hiring manager if there was no HR person) and ask them how you submit your expenses for reimbursement. Be sure to ask what expenses are covered. As I mentioned, we remiburse for travel to and from the airport as well as parking, meals, etc.
On the off chance they don’t pay, you may be able to deduct the costs on that year’s tax returns. This does not constitute tax advice. Consult your tax professional and other disclaimers apply.
Yeah, contact the companies HR and explain what happened. They may either prefer to get the charge sent directly to them, or else prefer you to request re-embursement from them for your costs. Keep good contact with the company, as maybe the other job doesn’t turn out to well, or else when you are next looking you might be more ready to move to CA.
I just got the receipt from the hotel faxed over to me and it says that it credited my account for the room, with a final charge of $0.00. WTF? I’m gonna have to call the hotel tonight and find out what the deal is.
Here is what likely happened.
The company made reservations and provided a credit card number to hold the reservations. If it is a small company, they may have assumed that the reservations would be automatically paid for by this credit card number. If they are a large company, they probably faxed over paperwork which the hotel prompty shoved in a drawer somewhere.
You show up, and they don’t realize for whatever reason that the card the account was reserved under is the one that should be charged. They may know you were a corporate client, but assumed your card was a company card or that you would recieve compensation after submitting receipts. . Or they may have just screwed up and lost the paperwork stating that your personal card shouldn’t be charged (they will still need a personal card, however, as a security deposit). In any case, hotels always assume that the cards being offered to them are the ones being charged, and you have made whatever arrangements with your company that you need.
At some point they either found the paperwork or heard from the company, realized the mistake and credited the amount back to your account.
When a hotel bill is paid by credit card, as yours was, this is the way it will show on the receipt. They will show the total amount, then the credit card payment, leaving a balance of zero. From the hotel’s standpoint, that is what you now owe, since it was paid by credit card.