I have a question. Just a curiosity. Not a problem.
Lets say I need a product or service and I order it from a company I always buy this product or service for, and lets say my order gets filled correctly except for one thing: the company I always order from messes up this order and bills me for a couple hundred $ less than I know I’m supposed to pay.
Now lets say I do nothing about that. Maybe I don’t even know myself at the time that it happened, Months go by and eventually someone in the company, maybe an independent auditor, finds the mistake. They contact me and say they undercharged me. I check it out and we agree and I pay what I owe them.
Now lets also say they say I had a legal obligation to bring the undercharge to their attention when it first occurred, and they sound ornery about how I behaved. How should I respond to that?
I think my response to a claim that I made a mistake or did something wrong by not reporting their undercharge mistake to them should end with something like “…and the horse you rode in on!”
You did the right thing as a consumer by paying up when they found the accounting problem.
There are some transactions where systemic undercharging on invoices can be a symptom of deeper fraud, especially sales tax or other tax evasion. (e.g. the invoice and books show $20 transaction but really $200 was the amount under the table and the delta represents at the very least cooking the books and more than likely has something to do with tax evasion by the biller.) I’m sure an auditor would want to look for systemic patterns and might even grill you a bit about exactly what was going on, but IMHO you as a consumer could have no inkling what’s going on. I’ve been deposed as a witness (not a litigant) in at least one such fraud case (I was neither paying nor giving the bill but knew of some material quantities that didn’t match what the invoice said.)
Thx, Tim, but past tense (“did the right thing…”) is premature. My Q was a what if. I just wanted to make that clear.
I was really most concerned IF they were to claim I erred by not bringing the mistake to their attention myself. I would contend I have no such legal obligation at any time, and that’s what I’m curious about.
I think that the worst case scenario is simply having to pay the full amount owed. I am not a lawyer, but that is my opinion. I think patients are only responsible for paying amounts billed to us - we’re not even really capable of getting into their systems to know the allowed amounts for different services.
I have been undercharged before because of an error on the insurance company’s end. Due to the extreme hassle of getting the claim covered, I figured underpayment was appropriate and didn’t point out their error to them. It has been a few years now, and it seems they never found the error.
I would morally but not legally feel some responsibility to report the perceived undercharge. I think the comment you received from the supplier that you had a legal responsibility to report the “undercharge” is rich.
The suppliers and payers have together created a system that is needlessly complex and often burdens the customer with the role of enforcing fair play. How many times do we have to wring out the absurd delays and are forced to listen to inane excuses such as “we’re waiting to hear from your doctor’s office”? This contrived over-complication often works in the suppliers/payers favor.
As customers we should not also be forced to audit the business of a supplier. We have enough on our hands managing the supply we need to receive in order to survive. If it were me, I would communicate, just once, about the perceived undercharge and then move on. We should not be held responsible for the business performance of our suppliers.
I say you are not responsible to verify that a lower price is the result of a mistake (perhaps there was an actual price reduction). Also, you are not responsible for remembering you paid a lower price previously when you are again charged the higher price.
Really not sure on this one. I have all my billing just automatically handled through our FSA account. We check things every few months to see if everything has been taken care of. There have been times where the money doesn’t hit our account for months after we’ve paid. I mean sometimes I don’t get a bill for months, so I think with as complicated as insurance and billing is, who knows what’s going on.
I think you should pay what is due. Otherwise it’s kind of stealing. It’s nice to not have to pay for something because of a mistake but then you live with that.
Totally different from extending a sensor to save money, even though the manufacturer does everything they can to prevent that. Because you bought it and you use it the way you want.
If I mistakenly undercharge a customer, they’re not going to say “hey, wait a minute, this is supposed to be “X dollars!” They will say “thank you” and go on their merry way.
Now if I later on realize I’ve undercharged, I can invoice them for what I missed (without interest) and they are obliged to pay up. But they don’t have to pay what I originally quoted, if my invoice is lower.
On the other hand, if I overcharge, and they notice it, they are entirely within their rights to dispute the charge. And of course, if I overcharge and they pay: lucky me!!
Most of us know what the charges for our supplies are supposed to be.
But if I went to a store and they charged me 10 dollars for a shirt that I know costs 100, I would definitely speak up and correct it.
I know not everyone would. And I know if it’s a small amount maybe I wouldn’t bother.
But if I’m billed incorrectly, like the person who posted this originally stated, knew it was wrong and wondered if they were obligated to report it.
I say yes, you saw the error so you are morally obligated to at least ask them if the charge was correct.
I don’t know about legality though.
I had a bank error many years ago put several thousands of dollars in my account.
I knew it was a mistake and you can be sure if I withdrew that money I would have to repay it when they discovered it.
But that stress of taking something because someone else made a mistake feels wrong to me, even if it’s a large company that can absorb it.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the insulin companies especially rip us off by charging way more for insulin than is fair, and maybe that is one way to recover a tiny bit of that over charge.
Still it seems wrong to me.
What if the person who made that error lost their job because of that loss of money and really depends on the income.
Do you feel ok knowing that?
Not everyone cares taht much, I know but the question was asked so I was just giving my opinion
