Often1

All a matter of the employer.

Smart employers don't really care who ate an extra egg for breakfast. But, they do care that someone is expensing the egg as a taxi because the latter is fraudulent.

If your employer nickels and dimes you on this sort of stuff, you have to question how much you are valued. If this is the only minor issue, the smart money is on ignoring it. But, if it is part of a pattern, then evaluate whether the positives of the job outweigh the negatives and consider new horizons.

roberino

A colleague travelled to Germany on business. He was pre-booked into a hotel near the work site using his personal credit card, paid in full in advance, at EUR140 per night for four nights. When he arrived it was evident the hotel was closed due to COVID, which they hadn't informed him ahead of time, and the only employee on site handed over a pre-printed booking for another hotel in the same chain 18km away. It was a lower class of hotel, although still within acceptable standards. He asked at both the original hotel and the new one for a refund and got told to email a complaint. His complaint outlined the downgrade and the additional fuel costs he incurred. He then expensed the original cost and moved on.

8 weeks later he received 2/3 (EUR350) of the cost refunded back onto his personal credit card, accompanied by an email to his work account. He reasoned it was possible that others could have access to view his email account so he emailed the Ops manager to outline what had happened. The Ops manager initially seemed like they were going to wave this one through, but then the owner/CEO pointed out that:Said employee attempted to argue that the compensation was for the inconvenience that HE had suffered, but the CEO said that there was no inconvenience as driving to and from a work site is normal work practice and having to drive a bit further doesn't change that. Employee backed down but wasn't happy.

pinniped

OK, a little weird that the CEO got involved on a 350-euro matter...that's eyebrow-raising because it makes me wonder where his/her focus is.

That said, the company is technically right. Assuming the employee was reimbursed for the distance driven or actual fuel (however that company/country handles business expenses in a personal car), the hotel refund belongs to the company - and it's fairly unambiguous to me.

mecabq

It's not the same fact pattern.

1. The NBA refs deliberately defrauded their employer in a premeditated fashion. In the OP's case, he received an unexpected benefit after the fact -- in fact, the benefit was presumably to compensate him for a poor experience so in theory it made him whole. I still think that the OP should reimburse his employer, but intent matters. One could make a plausible argument that the goodwill gesture from the hotel is one of those little things (like frequent flier benefits or cash-back from a credit card, which I doubt that anyone would think should be remitted to the employer if it's used for business travel that the employer reimburses) that come up in the course of business travel in exchange for the hassles, so it's not that big of a deal for the employee to keep it.

2. The NBA presumably pays for F travel because it leads to benefits for the employer, whether it's the image of the league or improved performance among referees. The offending employees underminded benefits as well as stealing money. No such harm in the OP's case.

roberino

A friend hired a college grad who had great references and interviewed amazingly well. The position was field support and the first month he shadowed a colleague before going off alone to take some of the easier jobs. Clearly, given the COVID situation, some travel had to be cancelled. Being a young person he didn’t have a big credit limit and was therefore expensing bookings as soon as they were made. After four cancellations and no money back the controller audited his expenses and asked what happened to the money from cancellation of four hotels, four flights and two rental cars.

He first tried to say they were non-refundable, but checking the receipts/emails he submitted with the claims proved that was false. He then said the payments hadn’t been refunded yet so the controller asked for his CC statement. He declined. He was told to either pay back the money or provide proof of why he didn’t have it within 3 days. At that point he apparently walked out of the customer site leaving the job incomplete and unsafe with tools just lying around. The following day his phone and laptop were found on the doorstep of his local office (not the one where he was based) and a resignation email was sent to his manager saying he quit because “the job was not as had been described” and that when he had raised this “a campaign of victimization” was started. His last pay check covered about 40% of what he owed so the company is now pursuing him through the courts and threatening criminal action if the money and costs are not returned.

I’m genuinely baffled as to how he thought he would get away with this???

FlyingHighlander

Sounds like pure immaturity and complete lack of understanding of how easily this would eventually be flagged. He's about to find out the methods that probably somewhat worked on his parents won't last 2 seconds in the corporate world.

Smiley90

Crazy, because the person likely would've made more money by just...... doing their job instead of trying to steal money?