the passionate ailurophile

I called the oil company this morning about being undercharged.  At first he misunderstood, and thought I was calling to complain about being overcharged.  When he realized that I was letting them know that the guy yesterday made a mistake, and charged me $406.69 instead of the correct amount of $460.69, I thought he was gonna drop dead from the shock.  I guess in his experience, most people would have just kept silent, and kept the money, hoping that no one at the oil company would eventually notice the discrepancy.

When the poor guy finally composed himself, he thanked me about a dozen times for being honest.  I went ahead and authorized him to charge it to the same card, rather than dealing with mailing a check.

We’ve been having some seriously cold weather here, and this oil company has been super busy, which was why it took them so long to show up yesterday.  A lot of people are using this company as opposed to others, because they have lower prices.  People are trying to save money in any way they can, and heating oil isn’t something you can go without around here.  It’s easy to make mistakes when you are tired and overworked, probably why the office people didn’t notice the error, either.

But to me, “saving money” does not constitute keeping money that rightfully belongs to someone else.  It’s sad to know that if this had happened to one of my neighbors, especially residents of The House of Skeeve, no doubt they would not have said anything, they’d have just spent that $54 on cheap beer and smokes, and had a party.  After all, the motto of The House of Skeeve is “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, too”.

Well, at least I can go to sleep each night knowing that I am a better person than they are.  I can not only feel good that I gave the oil company their $54, but that I probably made that poor overworked guy’s day with my phone call.