Ask The Rabbi

Ask The Rabbi

category:  Chassidut

Honesty in business dealings

Hello Rabbi,
I have a question about money…

On October 28, I placed an order for a tripod from Amazon, for about $123. On October 30, it was listed as “arrived” at my house, but I didn’t have it yet. On November 3, I still did not have it yet and I checked outside my neighbors’ houses and they didn’t have it either, so I reached out to Amazon and they gave me a full refund for the item.

At the end of November, around 20 or more days later, the box showed up at my house, wet and faded, with a sticky note on the outside, where someone wrote to the postal service that it was delivered to the wrong house. It was sitting outside their house for many weeks while they were out of town.

I had already been refunded for the item by Amazon. I would have loved to keep it for free, but I felt like I didn’t have a right to keep it without paying for it, even though it was not my fault the delivery people dropped it to the wrong place and that it got to me almost a month late.

People around me told me that I should just keep it and enjoy it as a free gift from G-d. But I wasn’t sure if that was right.

I called Amazon and told them what happened. And they said they will have to re-charge my credit card for the full amount! I asked if I could have some discount because it came so late. They gave me a $10 coupon to their website. I asked if it could be more than that, because the item is very expensive, and the man said, no, $10 is all they could give, usually they only give $5. I do admit that I was shocked, I thought I would be rewarded in some way for being honest with them, and they are such a big company, it hardly would have been a loss to them… but they didn’t seem to care.

Anyway, afterwards, people around me were a bit upset at me. They said that Gd gave me a gift by sending me the item after I was already refunded the price for it, and I was “ungrateful” to g-d by throwing it back in His face and telling the company so they could recharge me. They said I should have accepted it as a gift from Gd.

Now I feel like a fool. How should I look at things like this? I figured it was not mine to keep, and if Gd meant to send me a gift, Amazon could have said, “don’t worry, keep it and we won’t re-charge you”. But everyone else is saying that I looked at it in the wrong way, and it was Amazon’s fault and I threw Gd’s gift back in His face. So now I wonder if I did the wrong thing, and what halachah requires in such a case.

Thank you for your guidance!!

Shalom and thank you for your question!
A great Rabbi was once traveling with a wagon driver, who stopped the wagon and asked the Rabbi, (not realizing that his client was a great and learned person,) to watch the wagon while he went into the field and stole some produce! The Rabbi agreed, only while the man was busy gathering the contraband, he started crying “You are being watched, you are being watched!” The wagon driver turned his head this way, and he turned it that way, but didn’t see anyone in sight at all. He resumed his gathering, when again he was interrupted by the Rabbi’s cry, “You are being watched!” Eventually, the Rabbi explained to the driver that indeed, no physical person other than himself had seen him, but G-d watches our every move…
You understand what I mean…
You did the correct thing. You received an item, and paid for it. It could be true that the compensation you received for the company’s mistake, and the resultant delay in receiving the item, was not adequate, but probably it is also not worth the time, energy, or expense, to sue or make an issue of it.
It seems that you can celebrate the fact that you used your capacity for free choice to choose wisely, to choose truth. You can be proud of that fact.
Now, what about your friends, the ones who believe in G-d so strongly, that they don’t want to throw His gifts back in his face. That is admirable. Ultimately, deep inside they are probably aware that what you did was the correct thing to do, and thus you have earned yourself more points in the Heavenly scheme of things. Meaning, you accomplished a sanctification of G-d’s name. In the Ten Commandments, the ‘headlines’ of Jewish practice, it says not to take G-d’s name in vain. That’s why we don’t write all the letters of His name when we are just ‘talking’. There’s a positive aspect to this. Just as we are not to take his name in vain, we are to seek opportunities to sanctify his name. That’s why the great Rabbi Akiva, while being tortured to death, was actually happy, and explained to his students, as the life was seeping out of him, that he had always yearned to give up his life for the sanctification of G-d’s name.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe teaches us that this type of sanctification is not the challenge of the current generation, but rather, living according to the code of Jewish law, despite the challenges we have in THIS day and age, is the way we can and should sanctify G-d’s name. Even when Amazon doesn’t come through for us, and especially when they don’t, we need to do the right thing.
And that’s what you did…
In one of the Rebbe’s letters, he wrote to someone that “I’m glad you realize that you are on active duty….” and he also told the person that he was writing to, that he should “march forth with a song of victory!”
The famous codifier of Jewish law, Maimonides, goes into great detail about what constitutes sanctification of G-d’s name, and what constitutes desecration of it.
There are three categories for which we must be willing to give up our lives, rather than transgress. These are idolatry, adultery or other sexual offenses, and taking someone’s life. (Unless that person came to kill you.)
There are many laws and details concerning this, which we won’t go into right now, but it is interesting that Maimonides (known also by his acronym Rambam,) also teaches us that if a person behaves in a negative way, with unrefined character traits etc, that also constitutes desecration of G-d’s name. On the other hand, when people see a Jew who lives by his Jewish values, is caring, personable and honest, this is indeed a very great sanctification of G-d’s holy name!

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