First, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm not graciously thankful, but the events I'm about to describe are just downright weird in how they played out, to me.
This started a few months ago, seemingly after the county changed its computer system. I had returned a couple of due books in the evening, on the day that it was due. Normally when you drop books off at night, they accept it as though they were received the day they were due. The following day I was checking my account to see how my queue was doing, and I saw that I had a 1-day fine on one of the books that I just returned. I didn't complain, thinking that maybe there was a mistake made, and it was only $0.25 anyway.
A few weeks after that however, it happened again, where I dropped a pair of books off in the drop box at night, only to find one book resulted in a fine. Well, at that point it's still just a total of $0.50 in fines, so no worries; I figured that they must have changed their policy: books returned at night were given a free pass on the first, but not on any other materials after that.
Again, a few weeks after that I had returned some books - though these were truly a day late - they split the fine with one book getting an extra $0.25 fine. Seemed to reinforce my theory, and though I wasn't thrilled about it, I decided I'd just accept it.
Then this week happened.
This week, I was going to go in to the library to pick up a book held on reserve while dropping off 5 books (two of which were due that day) on my way back from a meeting. There was an hour before the library closed, but I couldn't find a parking spot, so I figured I'd just drop the books off in the drop box and pick up the book some other day. The next day I'm checking my queue, and again, one book received a fine while the other one didn't.
Now hold on for a moment here...I dropped BOTH books off before closing, and they still charged me a fine on one book? That just blew my mind that they'd charge me for returning a book on the day it was due, in the drop box, a full hour before closing. So I used their online form to send a query on why this happened, noting that while two books with fines were truly returned late, all the other fines seemed odd.
Two days passed on no response. Today, while in the shower, I was going through the mental exercise of figuring what to do next, if they never bother to respond, and leave the fines in place...do I go to a small claims court just on principle for that $1.00 of seemingly improper fines? How in the world would I prove my case? I suppose I could set up a video of evidence showing my returning two books due the same day?
So on the third day (today) I checked my account, and voila, all fines were gone! Not just the ones that seemed questionable, but all of them (still a meager $2.25 total).
But no explanation either. No emails, no phone calls, nothing at all, despite entering my email and phone # in the form, to allow them to contact me.
So like I said at the start, I'm graciously thankful, but the events are just downright weird, to me.
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