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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (62025)	11/3/1999 1:32:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I think the slippery slope can be fitted with some simple chainlink fences. I believe the teacher's situation is complex. On the one hand, she was mighty coy about disclosing the mistake. (Rather like the <ethnic> pharmacist who was overpaid - then rapped on the shop window to call the customer back. [With a sponge.])On the other hand, if the auditors took eight years to find the error, they should accept some responsibility and allow her to keep all except that which was disbursed within a reasonable statute of limitations. A year. That's more generous toward the auditors than what the IRS demands of us. The folks cutting the checks need to take responsibility for how they dropped the ball. The teacher wasn't stealing ... to me that includes initiative. When I was in grad school I got double-paid my stipend one month. I carried the supernumerary check back to the office with the story. They thanked me profusely and admitted that they would never have caught the error. Years later, we had a hospital expense and didn't get the bill for it. Six months out we called and were assure the bill was on its way. Six more months after that we called again ... and were informed that no balance was outstanding. Spouse asked "but what about <procedure> on <date>?" The reply she got was "It's not in our system ... and frankly your best course of action is to forget about it." OK, no problem. In TC's case, he directed the inquiry and three update attempts to the correct people. After a while, it becomes reasonable imo - quite independent of personal gain - to desist because the bureaucracy has proven resilient to reason. Tough on them. Maybe one of the attorneys can tell me how long an enterprise or agency can expect to have a billing error corrected after the initial miscalc. There's a statute of limitations here, isn't there?

To: Rambi who wrote (62025)	11/3/1999 2:44:00 PM
From: Thomas C. White	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Her argument will be, Hey they screwed up, not me. Well, there's a bit more grease on her slope penni. She contacted her bank, not the people who actually cut the check. All the bank would be in a position to do is check to verify whether they received a transfer of $8K to correspond to what she had in the account. They would probably not be in a position to determine whether the issuer of the check was making a mistake. For example, if she had written letters to the pension fund, asking whether there was an error, and the pension fund had written back saying there was no mistake, then she probably would be in good shape, and probably a court would tell the pension fund to eat the mistake (although I think this does not work with the IRS unfortunately). But she did not do that. On the other hand, I advised the people who were supposed to bill me that there was an error, several times. If I had just simply called my credit card company and asked them whether they had forgotten to put it on my bill, that would be doing the same thing as she did.