OH contract was ended, now 2months later they want £210.15 overpaid salary?

Googlewhacker

ashleygunn wrote: »

Actually my wife "walked out" and they overpaid her so we paid it back as it was her fault. But if they overpay you through no fault of your own consider this:

If you accidentally screw up your standing order and accidentally pay money into the wrong persons bank account, do they legally have to pay it back? No! Same rules apply to overpayment of salary if its not your fault.

So you would say that 5 million could be kept, you and I know this is not the case. There are very few reasons where someone can keep an overpayment (see the barclays overpayment to someone on a part time worker).

The vast majority of times in employment that where there is an overpayment regardless of whose error the person has to pay it back, now they don't obviously have to pay it back in one lump sum if they cannot afford it.

An overpayment on a contract is differant to an error in paying a standing order.

zzzLazyDaisy

ashleygunn wrote: »

Hello. I think you will find that the following rules apply.

If they overpay you as a result of you terminating your employment and not giving the correct amount of notice, (i.e you walk out) you have to legally pay it back.

If they terminate your employment, or if you do give the correct amount of notice and they still overpay you - the money is yours. Nowt they can do about it.

And you can't give a former employee a bad reference (defamation of character), you can only refuse to give one.

I took legal advice when my wife was overpaid as a result of her walking out of her job five years ago.

This is not true. An employer is entitled to reclaim an overpayment of wages. There are some situations where the employee can avoid the repayment using the doctrine of estoppel, but this is highly legalistic and not an easy route to take.

It would be unusual for an employer to go the whole hog and go to court over £200, simply because it would be a small claims court case, so legal fees cannot (normally) be reclaimed from the losing party, and the legal fees would be far in excess of the overpayment. However, they may take a robust approach to give a clear message to their existing employees, and go to court regardless of the costs.

Re the reference - while it is true that an employer would be acting unlawfully if they gave a false or untrue reference, the fact is that you are probably unlikely to take them to court over it. There is no legal aid for defamation actions.