At what price ethics?

Greg here.
I remember when I served on the board for American Heritage Girls when some dialogue was occuring on the spirtiual differences between AHG and Girls Scouts of America. Part of the dialogue revolved around the greater cost to each family to have a girl in American Heritage Girls versus having her in Girl Scouts and that some families had their girls join Girl Scouts because of this. The Girl Scouts have seriously left its original roots and has become heavily feminist (and all the negatives that go with that designation) and very much openly stands against Christianity and the values contained within that belief system. The executive director made a comment at the time that she is always amazed when people will sell their beliefs for so little a cost. In other words, people will choose a organization to save a few bucks even when they know that organization stands against their stated beliefs. That has always stuck with me. I found her statment to be simple yet very powerful. In fact, it has haunted me since then wondering for what exactly would I sell my beliefs. It has been pretty scary a few times. I have found temptation in selling my beliefs for mere pennies. Forget millions. While I can't recall a time when I actually sold my beliefs, I do know that there have been times when I have had to actively campaign against myself from doing so. Perhaps the most recent was when I discovered that we had failed to report $750 on last year's income tax. Almost all of that money was paid to me in cash over the course of the year so there is no paper trail for it. It was very tempting to simply let it go. Certainly the IRS would never have found out about it. They couldn't have. I even thought about simply overreporting my income by $750 this year to "make up for it". In the end, I completed an amended return and mailed in the extra $106 we owed the IRS. All the while, I knew that our likelyhood for audit or some other problem was exponentially increased. Well, probably not exponentially, but still.

OK, so what in the world does all this have to do with our adoption. We have sent in and paid for an application to a particular homestudy agency. After we and they agreed on costs, after we sent in the application, after we paid the application fee, and after they verified receipt of the application, they came back and told us they were adding new fees for us that would total about $90 extra dollars per visit beyond what we had originally agreed. After complaining about this, they agreed to reduce it to an extra $65 per visit beyond our original agreement. I am still fired up about this, and we have been dealing with it for several weeks.

So the question is this. Do we continue with this agency? In some ways, the easy answer is "Absolutely not". This is not such an easy answer however, because to change to a different agency would likely cost an extra $1000 by the time everything is said and done. So, do we go with an agency whose integrity is now seriously in question to save a thousand bucks. Or, do we switch agencies knowing that the cost to us would be substantial?

Any thoughts are most welcome.