Legal advice about over payment at a Bureau de Change

swedeyhead

A friend of mine works in a Bureau de Change and accidentally paid a customer £400 too much money. She's pretty upset about this because her boss is giving her grief.

However, the situation is, because the customer prepaid she has the customer's name, address and phone number, she has tried to contact her without any luck.

My friend thinks that if the customer doesn't want to pay it back, she doesn't have to. I've told her that I'm pretty sure that isn't the case and that legally she is obliged to pay it back.

Who is right?

liam8282

How can she actually prove that she paid this one customer too much?

If she has made a mistake of a £400 overpayment, what is to say that she hasn't made a mistake in thinking it was that customer she overpaid?

At the end of the day, the customer will no doubt just say that they received the correct amount of cash.

It is a bad mistake to make, especially as everything in Bureau de Change is calculated using computers, the only thing that is manual is the staff counting out the cash. Also for large amounts, which I expect this would be if there was a £400 overpayment, the cash is usually verified by another member of staff before it is given out.

Your friend has messed up and will probably have no way of proving either way if the customer has the extra £400, so at the end of the day it is her fault and it isn't a wonder she is getting grief of her boss.

The only argument she may have is with her boss for not checking the cash before it was given out, but I doubt that will be any excuse.

swedeyhead

Sorry. I didn't make all the circumstances clear. The customer paid in advance for 2 lots of cash - 1 for £100 and 1 for £500. She has all the paperwork to prove this.

Unfortunately she accidentally read it as two lots of £500 and paid that amount of foreign currency and has the invoices to show that is what she paid.

She realised at the end of the day what she had done and has left messages for the customer to phone back since it happened on Thursday.

In my opinion all the paperwork clearly shows that the customer was overpaid and legally she has to repay the extra. Hopefully it won't come to worrying about the legalities and the customer will happily pay it back.

The customer is actually a friend of another person who works at the bureau, They know that she doesn't go on holiday till tomorrow.

pinkshoes

Any honest person would return the money. Perhaps they didn't check the amount so don't realise they've got £400 than they should have?

Your friend should speak to the manager, and perhaps citizens advice bureau, then perhaps hand deliver a polite letter to this person's house today, pointing out the mistake made, and asking that they either return the £400 or pay for it.

KILL_BILL

if the bank or the bureau de change have noticed the mistake within a short period of time and have written to the person concerned to request refund then they have case to pursue even through the court for the £400 in question

swedeyhead

KILL_BILL wrote: »

if the bank or the bureau de change have noticed the mistake within a short period of time and have written to the person concerned to request refund then they have case to pursue even through the court for the £400 in question

Thanks mate I'll pass that on to my mate.

I was sure (leaving the questions of proof and morality aside for a minute) that a customer can't take the attitude that "you made the mistake, therefore I can keep it."

To be honest, I can understand, from the customer's point of view, why they might see it as a nice windfall, but she was informed (by a message left on her mobile's messaging system that evening), so I'm sure legally the customer hasn't got a leg to stand on.

Art_2

It is illegal to keep the money and a case can be passed to the Police if need be.

Regards,
Art.

MilkyJoe

KILL_BILL wrote: »

if the bank or the bureau de change have noticed the mistake within a short period of time and have written to the person concerned to request refund then they have case to pursue even through the court for the £400 in question

Does that mean that when shops say, "Check you're change before leaving, as mistakes can't be rectified later" isn't true?

fergies_army

Art wrote: »

It is illegal to keep the money and a case can be passed to the Police if need be.

Regards,
Art.

If the receiptant can state they had no intention to dishonestly appropriate the said item (money) belonging to another then no. I.e. I never counted the money, I had no idea I received more, I used it to pay for something and handed it all over not realising there was more there etc etc.

Would be a civil matter.

Art_2

fergies_army wrote: »

If the receiptant can state they had no intention to dishonestly appropriate the said item (money) belonging to another then no. I.e. I never counted the money, I had no idea I received more, I used it to pay for something and handed it all over not realising there was more there etc etc.

Would be a civil matter.

If you used it to pay for something I would think you would know how much you paid. We're not taking about a few ££s here. It's £400!!

Regards,
Art.

liam8282

I agree with all the points above, but what it is to say the customer will not just come back and say "I ordered xxx, I received xxx"

I do not see how you can prove the customer took the extra cash, or from another point of view the Bureau de Change worker didn't pocket the cash themselves?

At the end of the day your friend is at fault and has made a bad mistake.