School refusing to reimburse visit costs--help??

[dhanson]

I'm not sure if people are still reading these forums now that the season is over, but I'm in a very difficult situation and any advice would be helpful.

In November, I was asked by a POI to come visit his lab, and that he would reimburse some of the costs of the flight. I went, and on my last day there, his secretary gave me forms to fill out to get $350 (a lot of money for me!!) reimbursed (the flight had cost $500). When I got home, I filled out the forms, sent them to her, and got a reply that everything looked good and that my check should arrive in December or January. Several weeks later, I declined their offer. 4 months later, I am still waiting for my check, and the secretary responded curtly to my email inquiry with "Your reimbursement is under review". After that, she has not responded to any of my emails (politely) asking for more information.

What should I do??

[Hillary Emick]

Yikes. I think that you should have followed up on this before declining the offer. I don't think they have a legal obligation to reimburse your expenses and now that you have declined they probably won't.

[rockhopper]

I would keep on them for it. Don't give up because that's a lot of money. Keep all your original receipts for travel. I'm still waiting for reimbursement checks as well...i keep checking my mail everyday...

[felicidad]

How long exactly has it been since you declined their offer? I have never heard of any school refusing to reimburse a candidate who visited the school. For one, that would reflect poorly on the department in academic circles. The academic community is very small, and even smaller by discipline. The terse reply you perceived from the graduate secretary may reflect one or more of a few things:

1) S/he has a very concise writing style which you might have misinterpreted

2) S/he is busy

3) You have asked too many times

4) S/he has nothing new to tell you and prefers to respond when s/he has new information

I did an admittedly cursory gradcafe search and only found one thread concerning this issue:

You may find the replies there helpful. The OP did receive his reimbursement, much later than expected.

Edited April 10, 2012 by felicidad

[dhanson]

Yikes. I think that you should have followed up on this before declining the offer. I don't think they have a legal obligation to reimburse your expenses and now that you have declined they probably won't.

In their invitation they never stated "If you decide not to come here we will not reimburse expenses". In fact, they made it clear that the reason they wanted me to visit was to make sure I would like it if I decided to come.......I would never take legal recourse anyways (not worth a lawyer and I live in a different state so small claims court wouldn't work), I was hoping for a more peaceful solution.....:-)

[dhanson]

How long exactly has it been since you declined their offer? I have never heard of any school refusing to reimburse a candidate who visited the school. For one, that would reflect poorly on the department in academic circles. The academic community is very small, and even smaller by discipline. The terse reply you perceived from the graduate secretary may reflect one or more of a few things:

1) S/he has a very concise writing style which you might have misinterpreted

2) S/he is busy

3) You have asked too many times

4) S/he has nothing new to tell you and prefers to respond when s/he has new information

I did an admittedly cursory gradcafe search and only found one thread concerning this issue:

You may find the replies there helpful. The OP did receive his reimbursement, much later than expected.

I declined their offer in mid-December, and the first time I wrote the gradsec was in mid-February. It was her reply to that first email that was terse............when she had previously written me (to let me know that my reimbursement forms had been received), her tone was much friendlier and helpful, and she let me know the exact date when she hoped to have the check in hand, even apologizing for the possibility that the holidays might mean that the check might come a few days later. This "friendlier" email was before I declined.

Thanks for the link to that thread.....it is good to know at least that someone has had a similar experience. But it seems most people on that thread eventually got their checks within 2 months.........I'm now going on 4........

Edited April 11, 2012 by dhanson

[ktel]

You might have inadvertently burned a bridge by rejecting them so soon after visiting, and quite early in the decision making process. I hope that's not the case, and they really are working on your cheque (university's are notoriously slow at doing stuff like this)

[TakeruK]

I don't know all the details but was your visit a specially arranged one for you, or was it part of an "open house" (seems pretty early in the year to be doing that!). Do you know if the reimbursement was supposed to come out of your POI's budget or part of the department general grad student recruiting budget. If it's the former, maybe contacting your POI would be a good idea. I say this because it's possible that they are waiting on your POI to sign off on something that has been sitting under a pile on the POI's desk for months now (this happened to me once and my undergrad RA pay was delayed by almost 2 months).