Advice please on my pay!

cornerblock

Sounds very unreasonable on your employers part, who do you work for? The Inland Revenue! I would get your Union involved again, am pretty sure they would be able to come to a fair agreement with your employers. If you do have to pay it back, and I don't think you should, then they should recieve it the same way you did, a tenner a month.

bails87

I think they have to make it "reasonable". Which is nice and vague! Speak to payroll and your union if necessary. They should be able to spread it over a few pay cheques.

Crapaud

Call the ACAS helpline on 08457 47 47 47. I've found them very knowledgable and helpful.

I don't see why they can't take the money back at the same, or close to the same, rate that they overpaid you. Or, failing that, at a rate that suits you.

volvicspar

Just offer them £10 a month, seems fair!

redvee

With the others on this, a reasonable amount per month. You didn't notice the tenner overpayment so you won't miss the tenner deduction.

Mr_Cellophane

You must pay it back, but in amounts that are reasonable to both parties ie not 10p a month nor all in one go.
Paying it back over a year seems reasonable to me.

flasher

So you first heard about it 12 months ago! You knew it would have to be repaid, did you save any money in the intervening months?

BaildonBob

A cock up at our work meant our Chief Exec owed money back. He got to repay over 18 months.

rick_chasey

Resign in protest.

daviesee

redvee wrote:

With the others on this, a reasonable amount per month. You didn't notice the tenner overpayment so you won't miss the tenner deduction.

Being pedantic, it will be £20 per month.

£10 to bring it to where it should have been and another £10 to pay back the excess.

£20 per month still won't be noticed too much, I hope.

rolf_f

Double post.....

rolf_f

Flasher wrote:

So you first heard about it 12 months ago! You knew it would have to be repaid, did you save any money in the intervening months?

+1 Jjust pay them the money you saved in the last year.

Bradders87

What does your employment contract stipulate for the case of overpayment?

guinea

Unless you really love you job you should pay up and leave.

To treat you like that is a disgrace.

What sort of a company goes to that much trouble to take £248 of a member of staff due to their screw up?

You're better off somewhere that values their staff.

rolf_f

guinea wrote:

Unless you really love you job you should pay up and leave.

To treat you like that is a disgrace.

What sort of a company goes to that much trouble to take £248 of a member of staff due to their screw up?

Any company that has any sense whatsoever. What sort of employee would leave over being asked to pay back what they owe given that it is a relatively small amount?

MaxwellBygraves

Rolf F wrote:

guinea wrote:

Unless you really love you job you should pay up and leave.

To treat you like that is a disgrace.

What sort of a company goes to that much trouble to take £248 of a member of staff due to their screw up?

Any company that has any sense whatsoever. What sort of employee would leave over being asked to pay back what they owe given that it is a relatively small amount?

Whilst I agree the company is entitled to ask for it's money back, I think the point is that he can't do it on his terms - by asking him to pay it back on their terms, an employee is worse off financially because of a company boo-boo, which isn't fair.

Kaise

not to fan the flames of anything but

Early last year I received an email from my payroll department

shouldnt you have agreed at this point that, yes it was their mistake, but you were willing to pay the money back, and therefore been either giving them the money monthly or saving it up to pass to them?

Think of it from an employers point of view, a year has gone by and you still, in their eyes, owe them the money. A year after notifying you of the fact you have been overpaid, you havent put the money to one side to pay back?

So;
Yes it is unfair to ask for the money in a lump sum
YES it should be paid back on your terms

but you havent made any attempt to give the money back/nor put the money to one side

I actually think that if you refuse to pay them back it can amount to theft, which in turn is gross misconduct which means you will lose your job.

Aggieboy

Borrow the money off your Dad, brother, friend etc to pay the excess, and pay them off at £20 pm?

NWLondoner

Why did you argue with payroll?? They are (usually)a bunch of faceless morons. You are just a number to them

You should have gone to a regional manager or divisional director (if you have one) with your complaint. Insisted you would pay back at a reasonable rate and leave it with them.

If you are a trusted/valued member of staff then they will usually back you as they would not want to loose you. Also IMO getting your union involved is never a good idea UNLESS you are being substantially victimised. They usually make matters worse.

Leaving it the 12 months and NOT contacting them yourself was a mistake. You should have said you would pay back at say £15 per month and also make a formal complaint to HR regarding this.

At the end of the day is this a job you want to risk loosing over a relatively small amount??

Fingers crossed it works out for you but this kind of stuff should be nipped in the bud.

TuckerUK

Was it your job or their job to calculate your earnings? Theirs! You accepted your pay in good faith that it was correct. They did not notice it was incorrect in a timely manner and correct it. You should in no way be inconvenienced by their error. They should recover the errant amount from the person/s that made the error.

I'd actually seek legal advice if I were you.

Weejie54

Actually I did offer to pay it back on my terms when they first contacted me however my union wrote to them suggesting it should all be dropped. I have also sent them numerous emails (which I still have) asking what was happening and until yesterday had not heard a thing!!!

Did your union receive a reply? There should have been some response to the original negotiation.

Like others have suggested, you should be able to negotiate terms of repayment. If the error was made over a number of months, and you spent the money, believing it was correctly paid to you, even after paying it back, you could sue them. It's a thing called estoppel which has been discussed here before.

cougie

I'd speak to your uniion. How did they leave this issue ? Resolved ? Unresolved ?

Your offer to pay it off in a year seems very sensible seeing as they took a year to overpay you the sum.

t4tomo

Tucker UK is correct - a lot of what is posted before is poor advice / unwarranted critisism.

As long as was not an obvious or manefest mistake, which £10 amonth isn't then as you accpetd that as your wages in good faith they have no right to claim it back, and if your HR / payroll manager has any qualifications they should know this.

By all means they can pay you correctly going forward but the £248 is yours to keep,

Weejie54

Tucker UK is correct - a lot of what is posted before is poor advice / unwarranted critisism.

As long as was not an obvious or manefest mistake, which £10 amonth isn't then as you accpetd that as your wages in good faith they have no right to claim it back, and if your HR / payroll manager has any qualifications they should know this.

By all means they can pay you correctly going forward but the £248 is yours to keep,

That is poor advice.

This is sound advice:

In businesses operating computerised payroll systems, it is not unusual for an occasional error to arise resulting in a mistaken overpayment to an employee. This might take the form of an overpayment of basic rate pay or overtime pay or commission/bonus. The payslip is often fairly complex and employees sometimes fail to thoroughly check its contents. It can sometimes be a matter of weeks or even months before the employee or the business realise that an overpayment has taken place. In this situation, the legal question is whether the company are entitled to recover the overpayment and, if so, by what means.

In order to show that an overpayment is not recoverable, then the employee must demonstrate three things. Firstly, it must be shown that the overpayment was the fault of the company and not the employee. Secondly, it must have been reasonable for the employee not to know that they were being overpaid. Thirdly, the employee must have acted to their disadvantage or the assumption that the payment of salary was correct (for example by spending the money!). The most common difficulty for employees is the second condition since it is often obvious when an overpayment has occurred. It is not acceptable for an employee to assume that they have received a substantial increase in pay unless there is some reason to believe that this is the case.

The Employment Rights Act 1996 provides that it will not be an illegal deduction from wages to recover an overpayment from salary. This means that an employer is not prevented from deducting the overpayment from future wages or salary provided that this is done reasonably over a period of time and not done in such a way as to amount to a breach of trust and confidence in the employment relationship. The interesting point about the Employment Rights Act is that overpayments can be recovered from future wages whether or not the overpayment itself is recoverable from the employee on the basis of the three point test set out above.

In practice, the employer can simply recover an overpayment from wages and the onus is on the employee to then make a legal claim to attempt to claim back the money that has been wrongly deducted. This involves bringing a claim to the County Court and is inevitably rather complex. The employee will have to show that all of the three conditions outlined above have been met and this is often difficult.

Assuming that the employer intends to recover the overpayment from wages, then there is no fixed rule about the rate of recovery and whether this should be in one lump sum or over a period of months. However, there is a general rule that an employer must not act in such a way as to undermine the employment relationship or to breach trust and confidence. In the light of this general duty, the best advice for an employer is to discuss the overpayment with the employee and propose repayment over a reasonable period of time depending upon the size of overpayment and the period over which it occurred.