Overpayment by The Armed Forces 8 October 2009 at 2:37AM in UK armed forces MoneySaving 10 replies 2.4K views

MAD_2

I have recived a letter today from the MOD saying that the Army has overpayed me by £5,000 following dischage, that they have paid me for an extra 3 months after leaving, I need some advice as this was their mistake and I do not have £5000 to pay them back as I am only earning £120 a week at the moment.

Please can someone help me!!!

Thank you:think:

Tally-Ho_2

I have to ask, did you know you were being overpayed when the money kept rolling in?

Could you make some agreement to pay it back over a period of time mutually agreeable?.

Tally

snowball1972

Was your mistake to spend it!

Alias_Omega

Sorry, no real advice for you. But im sure someone will be along to help.

If you have some spare time, then you could contact the CAB near you, if not wait for a response from some of the admin type people in the forum.

Welcome to the forum, have your first thanks.

Regards,

Alias_Omega

TheBees

This happenned to my husband when he was overpaid £1500 in his final pay packets before leaving the RAF 2 years ago.

He was on terminal leave , living at home about 100 miles from his final posting so couldn't just pop in to work to sort it out. He made several phone calls to see what it was for but nobody could tell him what it was for, promised to look into it and would never ring back.....

In the end we put the extra £3000 into an ISA and decided not to touch it just in case they asked for it back. We then forgot about it.

Also, they would not send him a P45 and everytime he rang Innsworth to find out why one hadn't been sent nobody could explain why.

Then about 7 months after this, we had a letter from an agency saying they'd been asked to "Track us Down" as the RAF had been unable to contact us!!! This is ludicrous as we hadn't moved so all they had to do was look on my husbands records! They said we owed £3000 due to an overpayment...

We wrote a 3 page letter explaining the steps we had taken to find out what the overpayments were for, the phone calls about the P45 ( when nobody had mentioned any debt) etc and asked for the debt to be written off. Of course we had a reply saying that it was our fault!!!!

We finally agreed to pay £20 month for the next 12 years. We said we couldn't afford any more and they were fine with that. I wish we'd offered £10 month for 24 years now!!!! As far as I'm concerned it was their fault so they can wait for the money but my husband isn't comfortable about owing money!

If you genuinly can't afford to pay this back then offer a really low amount per month. I think they'll be happy with any agreement.

Hope this helps.

Asheron

Ooooohaha there still paying me and I left 5 months ago!

wow this is Great!

TheBees

Asheron,

Don't spend it and get in touch with the administrators for whatever service you were in. They will realise eventually and be on your case! Keep copies of letters and get peoples names when you ring.

TheBees

bumblebeebaby

oh dear is this happening to lots of folk?? Not sure how its dealt with, not at unit level, this would be through SPVA, the wonderfully useless JPAC team as we dont stop soldiers pay like we used to pre JPA in the admin office......(or am i missing something) oops lol

oscardog

I was overpaid an allowance for two years having questionned the clerk when she started it at month one. I again asked for confirmation 3 months later. Because they did not stop the allowance after my requests, when they finally asked for it back some 2 yrs later, I appealed and won.

It can be done if you keep records of your requests etc.

Trying_to_be_good

If you've been overpaid and know you were overpaid (easy to prove with the salary continuing, less easy to prove with the £5,000 lump sum unless you were previously told how much it should be or could work out what to expect), you will have to pay it back as the money was not yours to spend.

This is different to being paid an allowance when you've checked with the clerk and had written confirmation you should be getting it.

Come up with a reasonable repayment plan with them, and as oscardog says, keep copies of everything you send and receive, plus records of phone calls.

Esoog

What's all this clerk nonsense....?! It's Combat HR Specialist!