I think I may have posted about honesty before, I honestly don't remember 8-).

Ok, I am an honest person, but I was challenged to the tune of $500 dollars a couple of days ago. Would I take the easy 500 and walk away? Of course not. I prefer to look at it as buying $500 worth of karma.

I got a call from the Yamaha dealership, they had sold my motorcycle. Woot! In case you haven't been keeping score, they have had my bike on their lot for several months on consignment. Between you and me, I don't think they were trying very hard to sell it, which makes sense because they were only getting 10% of the sell price, whereas if they sold their own bike, they get all the money. Anyway, they sold my old motorcycle for $2000. Their cut was 10% which was $200, so I get $1800. Guy hands me the check, I start to walk away. then I stop.

In order to get the bike in tip top shape for selling, I had them do some work, and as you could guess, it was $500 worth of work. So I ask the guy if the check he gave me already had the repair work taken out. Maybe they sold the bike for $2500 or something. He has no idea. So we go talk to the guy that handles repair payments, he has no idea. The problem is, they somehow lost all the paper work associated to the repairs. They had no record of it in their system. Another chance for me to just walk away, and keep the extra $500. Nope, can't do it.

I tell the guy that I have to pay for the repairs. They scramble around for 15 minutes and come up empty handed. They were starting to get that look on their look on their faces like they may just tell me to go, and they will eat the $500. They explain how their system is shabby, etc... Eventually, their account lady or whatever comes back from lunch, and they get her working on the case. Eventually, she was able to track down one document showing the repairs, and the charge, but the charge had been closed out, so it appeared that I owed nothing. I assured them that I did not pay for the repairs, and that its only right that I settle up.

They thanked me profusely for my honesty, and offered to cut me another check with the repair amount out of it, in lieu of paying with a credit card or having to deal with it later, after I deposited their check. I accepted the new check and walked out with $1300.

I am pretty sure I could have gotten away with it. After all, it wasn't my fault, and I think they were willing to accept the fact that they were going to lose that money because they had bad record keeping. Kind of like that whole "Bank error in your favor, collect $200" situation in monopoly.

Be honest with yourself here... what would you have done?

My thought process was that maybe they would figure it out when they did some sort of quarterly close or an annual reconciliation or something, and then come looking for their money, well after I had spent it all on useless crap. Either that, or I would have $500 worth of bad luck coming my way. Either way, it was not supposed to be my money, so I made sure I didn't get it.