A reader, let's call her Lil, owns a two-family house in
the Northeast. She and her family live in one apartment. Lil rents the other
apartment out to another family. The renters, who have lived in the apartment,
are on a month-to-month lease.
Since they started renting, Lil has only raised the rent
once, and even then it was a minimal amount to help offset the increased cost
of city water that Lil pays. The tenants pay for their own heat and
electricity.
Last month, Lil noticed that the renter include $50 too
much in the monthly rent check. She emailed the tenants to let them know and
asked if they would like the $50 back or if they just wanted to take $50 off of
the following month's rent.
One of the tenants who handles the bill was embarrassed
she had wrote the check incorrectly and seemed to feel terrible about causing
any inconvenience. Lil assured her it wasn't a bit deal. The tenant chose to
simply pay $50 less for rent the following month.
When the following month's rent check arrived, it was for
the agreed-upon monthly rent. No $50 deduction had been made.
"She felt awful last time about making the check out
incorrectly," writes Lil. "Should I just forget about it and not
point out her error again this month?"
Lil's inclination is to not say anything, mostly because
she doesn't want to make her tenant feel bad. But is that the right thing to
do?
It's understandable that Lil doesn't want her tenant to
feel bad. Lil considers her and family to be great tenants, ones she can rely
on to keep an eye on the house when Lil is out of town, to take the mail in
occasionally, to pull the rubbish bins back in from the curb on trash day, or
to help out with shoveling snow when a storm hits. They've been tenants for
several years now and, knowing how hard it is to find good tenants, Lil doesn't
want to make the tenant feel stupid.
But while Lil's intentions are good, the right thing to
do is to return the $50.
Sure, the tenant made a mistake writing the check two
months in a row, but that doesn't remove the fact that she overpaid. The extra
money is hers, not Lil's.
Lil doesn't need to make a big deal about the overpayment
-- and, given her past response, it's unlikely she would. But she should alert
Lil to it.
She can simply email or tell her in person that she
overpaid and ask how she would like the money returned. The same offer she made
the previous month of giving her back $50 or simply letting the tenant take it
off of her next rent check would take care of business.
At some point, the tenant is likely to recognize that she
overpaid once again. When she does, her feeling foolish could turn to
resentment if Lil says nothing.
But that's not the reason Lil should point out the error.
In a relationship built on honesty, such as theirs has been, doing the right
thing is necessary even if it might create a bit of awkwardness in the process.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
(c) 2015 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
1 comment:
As Jeff says, point it out. Obviously offer the next month rent deal and possibly make a joke about it.
The only thing is that sometimes such things are overlooked by error. So the tenant should point out stuff like this when it happens also.
Nobody should get angry or take offense when all is done in good faith.
Alan Owseichik
Greenfield, Ma.
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