Should I order a free at-home Covid test?

Is it OK to order something offered for free if you're not sure you'll use it yourself?

Here's why I ask. On Wednesday, Jan. 19, the U.S. government launched a website (https://www.covidtests.gov/) and toll-free telephone number (1-800-232-0233, TTY 1-888-720-7489) from which U.S. residents could order four free at-home rapid COVID test kits. Each household address was limited to receiving the four free tests, which would ship from the United States Postal Service (USPS) seven to 12 days after they were ordered.

The announcement came as welcome news for many people, particularly after an increase in COVID cases at the end of last year, when at-home test kits at local pharmacies sold out quickly and ran about $20 for two at-home tests. If people wanted to spend time with family or others over the holidays but wanted to take the precaution of doing an at-home test first, it was not always a given they could find a test kit to use.

The website is simple enough to use. "Order your tests now so you have them when you need them" greets visitors to the site's homepage. Then, with a click on the "order free at-home tests" link, users are taken to a USPS site and simply fill out their shipping information.

Not long after news of the free at-home test kits went out, I began to receive questions from readers. Some wanted to know whether it was wrong to order the free test kits if they weren't sure they'd be using them since they rarely left their house. Others who owned a second house wondered whether it would be wrong to order a second set of kits to be sent there. Still others wondered whether there was something untoward about taking advantage of the free offer when they could afford to buy test kits and so far had managed not to have any trouble finding them on the shelves of their local pharmacies.

My short answer to each of these variants of the question is: Order the tests.

Take to heart that message on the https://www.covidtests.gov/ homepage to "order your tests now so you have them when you need them." You might not plan to leave your home, but plans have a way of changing and you don't know now whether you might need to invite someone else into your home to fix something like a leaky cast-iron drain pipe behind your kitchen cabinets. Ordering for both homes you own might seem inappropriate, but what if you are at that other home where your free test kits aren't when you might need to take them? If you can afford to buy a test kit, go ahead and order the free ones to use as back up or to have on hand if a neighbor or family member is in need and doesn't have any kits available.

The right thing is to decide how you want to keep yourself and others safe. If that involves having an at-home test kit on hand, go to the website or call the toll-free number and place an order today with no guilt whatsoever.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior 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 to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should I negatively review a typically reliable service company?

Should you post a negative rating for a service company you’ve received great work from for years?

That’s the question a reader we’re calling Amanda asked after her recent experience with a kitchen appliance repair service whose work has saved several of the aging appliances in her second-floor condo over the past several years. After an oven range began to act up about five years ago, Amanda began pricing what it would cost to replace the 20-something-year-old range with a newer model. After the sticker shock set in, she went onto Google and read the reviews of several local appliance repair companies before she settled on one whose reviews were numerous, stellar, and often from people living in her area.

“They came out, diagnosed the problem, and told me it would cost about $900 less for the parts and labor than it would have cost for a new range and any delivery charge,” wrote Amanda. The fix was made, the oven worked, and Amanda left a positive review on Google.

Whenever a friend was in need of a repair person, Amanda recommended the repair company. Her friends were equally pleased with the service and results.

Things changed right before Christmas after Amanda’s dishwasher began to leak and she had the repair service out to diagnose the issue.

“They found a piece had been corroded on the back of the dishwasher that needed to be replaced,” she wrote. The part was ordered and Amanda washed dishes in the sink for the couple of weeks it took for the part to come in and repair person to return to install it.

What Amanda didn’t know and only found out later was that the repair person who diagnosed the cause of the leak had disconnected the copper water line to the dishwasher when he moved the dishwasher out from under the counter so he could take a look. But rather than reconnect the water line, the repair person left it unconnected and small amounts of water left in the copper pipe slowly leaked into the back of her cabinets and began to drip through the corner of the ceiling right below her kitchen into the condo below her.

“At first we didn’t know what was causing the drip, but the guy who came to put the new part in figured it out,” wrote Amanda. There was no real damage to the condo below because the issue was caught in time. Amanda’s dishwasher works great now and she is relieved she didn’t have to spend the money on a new one, but she wonders whether she should post what happened in her review of the service.

No one is ever obligated to leave a review online for anything, so Amanda can rest easy not doing so. If she does post a review and she wants to be honest about the experience, the right thing is to include that detail about the drip.

But a better option might be to call the service repair company to tell the owner what happened. That might help ensure that the same mistake isn’t repeated by diagnosticians on future visits.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior 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 to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Can I write-off my donation without a receipt?

A reader we’re calling Agnetha was cleaning out her clothes closet over the holiday break. She assembled a pile of barely worn shoes that she decided she would donate to her local Goodwill store. After two days of sorting and compiling, Agnetha made the 16-minute drive to Goodwill to make the drop off.

Agnetha indicated in her email that she loves shoes, but she had come to terms that it was time to get the pairs she rarely wore onto the feet of someone who might make better and more frequent use of them. “I had about a dozen pair of shoes with me to donate all in great condition,” Agnetha wrote.

Typically, Agnetha indicated that she makes the drop-off to a large trailer-truck container in Goodwill’s parking lot. Generally, there is an attendant sitting at the open doors of the container to accept the donated items who can give Agnetha or others a receipt. But on this trip, while the container doors were open, there was no one in sight from whom to get a receipt.

“I don’t donate the items solely for the possibility of a tax write-off,” wrote Agnetha. “But if I can take the deduction, I’d like to.”

Agnetha is concerned, however, that she did not receive a receipt from Goodwill and wonders if it would be wrong to claim the charitable deduction anyway.

“Should I go back to Goodwill and get a receipt when someone is there?” asks Agnetha. “Or should I just write this off as a good deed and not bother with trying to claim the charitable deduction?” Agnetha made clear that she regularly will drop off bags of clothing to donation boxes along the highway and she rarely if ever tries to itemize those deductions on her taxes.

As I’ve written before, I am not a tax attorney intimately familiar with the nuances of what can or can’t be claimed as a charitable deduction. Nor am I familiar with Agnetha’s tax situation nor how she files her taxes each year.

But according to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s website, generally a receipt from a charity for goods donated is only needed if the donation is worth $250 or more. On its own website, Goodwill provides donors with guidelines on estimated donation values. For women’s shoes, it’s between $2 and $10. If Agnetha donated a dozen pair of shoes, the estimated value would fall between $24 and $120, well below that threshold. Agnetha would be wise to make a detailed record of what she donated, when she donated it, and the estimated value that she could keep in her own files if she decides to claim a charitable deduction.

If Agnetha would like to itemize her donations on a receipt from Goodwill for her records for piece of mind, those blank forms are available online for the donor to fill out. Or she can decide to simply donate the items without trying to take the deductions. The latter is a decision only she can make.

Again, I’m not a tax attorney so I am useless when it comes to helping Agnetha fill out her tax forms, but if she maintains detailed, honest records on her donations, that seems the right thing to do.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior 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 to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.