Been paid refund by mistake, and spent it!

WonderWellies

Hi,

In January I received a cheque from my pension company for 242 pounds. Thinking it was mine I cashed the cheque and used it pay for the MOT on my car and put the rest towards the insurance. The begining of this month I received a letter saying it was paid to me in error and should have been paid to my previous company, they asked for the full amount back in the letter. I sent a letter back explaining the situation and offered to pay the amount back at 24 pounds a month over 10 months. They replied asking that I pay over 4 monthly installments. Where do I stand, am I obliged to accept or can I make another offer? I was thinking of offering to pay the amount back over 8 months. Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers & Thanks.

themaccas

I think 8 months is more than fair, it was their error and you are meeting them halfway. Stand your ground and good luck!

Justin_Credit

Yes I would go along with that, it seems fair to me.

Regards JC

daveboy

Maybe I'm the only one who would think...to be common...!!!!!!? and phone them to find out.

Whilst it is their mistake and you can call the shots....take it as a lesson learned because alarm bells would ring for me if I suddenly got a cheque of that size unexpectedly.

WonderWellies

daveboy wrote:

Maybe I'm the only one who would think...to be common...!!!!!!? and phone them to find out.

Whilst it is their mistake and you can call the shots....take it as a lesson learned because alarm bells would ring for me if I suddenly got a cheque of that size unexpectedly.

Fair comment, will make a call if there's a next time. I forgot to mention that I actually cancelled a direct debit I was paying to them last October, so when the cheque turned up with a letter mentioning a cancellation I though it was related to that!

andy777_2

Hi Wonderwellies,

Perhaps you should consider your response if, say, your bank mistakenly took that amount of money from your account. Would you be happy with them returning the money over the next 8-10 months?

Batfink

andy777 wrote:

Hi Wonderwellies,

Perhaps you should consider your response if, say, your bank mistakenly took that amount of money from your account. Would you be happy with them returning the money over the next 8-10 months?

To be fair, she didn't take it - they sent it to her.

If she sent her bank a cheque and they cashed it, then that would be a similar situation.

Phil

andy777_2

With all due respect Phil, how Wonderwellies came into the money isn't really that important - I would think that fairness dictates that we deal with others(I don't work for a bank, promise!!!) the way we'd want them to deal with us??? Just a thought....

CLAPTON

just a small point, if the cheque hadn't turned up how would you haved paid the MOT and insurance?....could that money to used to repay the cheque

Twopints

andy777 wrote:

Hi Wonderwellies,

Perhaps you should consider your response if, say, your bank mistakenly took that amount of money from your account. Would you be happy with them returning the money over the next 8-10 months?

But this does not take into consideration the respective financial position of the parties involved or their respective obligations.

The bank is obliged to have systems and processes in place to prevent this type of mistake from happening and to rectify it if it does. Also the financial impact of a couple of hundred quid on a bank is not the same as that on an individual.

The OP was reasonably entitled to believe that this money was due to them as they deal with the pension company and had recently cancelled a DD (from the OP's subsequent post). The OP has made a reasonable offer and if it was me I would be saying take it or leave it, i.e either it is paid over 10 months or not at all.

While they think about that you could pay £24 a month into a savings account.

WonderWellies

CLAPTON wrote:

just a small point, if the cheque hadn't turned up how would you haved paid the MOT and insurance?....could that money to used to repay the cheque

The mot wouldn't have been too much of a problem, but I would have had to pay the Insurance over 10 months. I paid in 1 lump to avoid the finance cost. This is the first time I've managed to do this.