Too honest?

Two years ago the student loans company (due to the introduction of top-up fees) allowed students to take out a loan for tuition fees. I, due to the fact that I was out of the country for the entire summer and am not particularly organised must have ticked the box to say I wanted a loan for that without realising. As usual my parents paid the tuition fees and it wasn't until earlier this year that the university noticed that "I" had paid the fees twice. To rectify this mistake they refunded my parents the fees (who generously gave it to me) and we thought the situation was finished.

This morning I received a cheque from the university for over a thousand pounds. This was obviously a mistake so I rang up the university accounts office. After 40 minutes of being passed around from office to office and being kept on hold I was asked to ring back later. Later I rang back and I endured a similar (although perhaps not quite so lengthy) game of being passed around until finally someone was willing to ask me my student number and try to get to the bottom of it. They said they would ring me back.

At length, I got a response. As I already knew, the cheque was a mistake and I was asked to return it. Following this the lady to whom I was talking began to commend my honesty. She seemed most surprised that I was so willing to return the money under my own impetus. I find this very odd, and I dislike the fact that she seemed to think that it would be the norm for me to just keep it.