March 11, 2010

Honesty Pays

Gather all the kids around as you read this note from Aunt Lizzie about how it pays to be honest.

Literally.

Here's what happened.

Hubby and I recently attended the Organic Farming Conference in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. What was not mentioned in the previous post was that Yours Truly attended as a mentor. With that moniker came some responsibilities and some perks. One of the perks was that the conference people were covering the hotel charges for two of the three nights we were there. Nice!

Well, when we checked out, we were surprised to find that all three nights were paid for. I asked the person at the desk about it and she looked it up and said that there was no note that we were to pay for one of the nights.

So, what would you do? Let it go? Let the conference pay for all three nights? Eh?

Well, ever since that day, many years ago, when I was probably about 10 years old and my mother refrained from giving the checkout girl at the grocery store an expired coupon and I asked her why she bothered to do that and she responded that her integrity was worth more than 25 cents, I have tended toward the honest side.

I sent an email to the conference people explaining the situation and offering to reimburse them for the night that I was supposed to pay for anyway.

Have you figured out what's coming?

Angie, the organizer of the accommodations at the conference, going the extra mile in figuring out what happened, figured out that the hotel had actually charged MY credit card for ALL THREE NIGHTS at the hotel. (I had given them a credit card for "incidentals" but hadn't incurred any. They figured out how to use it anyway.)

I would not have noticed that the charge was on my bill. I had assumed that the conference had paid for all three nights. When I did look up my account, I found that, in fact, the entire bill was on my card. Angie got with the hotel people and I am being reimbursed for the two nights that the conference was planning to pay for all along.

In this incident, honesty saved me over $200!

Let that be a lesson to all you youngins.


No comments:

Post a Comment