Double Credited - Am I legally obliged to pay the money back?

fish2000

Hi Everyone

Noob to the forum, but love the work done here.

I have received a credit twice from a company from whom I made a purchase. One is correct (there was a problem with product I received), but the second is an error - do I have to pay it back?

Details are:

In December, I made a purchase from a large company and there was an error and I ended up with the an incomplete item. The company agreed to refund me £25, which I was happy with. The refund went straight back to my credit card. Credit duly showed up on my January Credit card statement.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an 'Overdue Payment Demand' from the company for the £25. I e-mailed the Accounts department, with a scanned copy of the demand and a copy of the Credit note sent to me relating to the refund. This got no response and I followed up with another e-mail about a week later. Again, no response.

Yesterday, I received a 'Overdue Payment Request Statement', again demanding that I pay the £25. Again, I e-mailed the company, this time sending the message to various departments in an attempt to get a response, which I finally did. The response indicates that a further error had occurred and I had in fact been credited the £25 twice. I have checked a more recent Credit Card statement and sure enough, I have received the credit twice. All this is entirely the company's error and I have to say, their process for chasing outstanding debt is not at all good, as none of the correspondence received prior to the e-mail response, explained that there had been a error and the rather lax efforts of the company to respond to me, leaves a lot to be desired too.

Ok, so you know the circumstances - do I have to give them their money back or is it their error and I should tell them "better luck next time"?

Thanks in advance for your time.

eranou

fish2000 wrote: »

Hi Everyone

Noob to the forum, but love the work done here.

I have received a credit twice from a company from whom I made a purchase. One is correct (there was a problem with product I received), but the second is an error - do I have to pay it back?

Details are:

In December, I made a purchase from a large company and there was an error and I ended up with the an incomplete item. The company agreed to refund me £25, which I was happy with. The refund went straight back to my credit card. Credit duly showed up on my January Credit card statement.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an 'Overdue Payment Demand' from the company for the £25. I e-mailed the Accounts department, with a scanned copy of the demand and a copy of the Credit note sent to me relating to the refund. This got no response and I followed up with another e-mail about a week later. Again, no response.

Yesterday, I received a 'Overdue Payment Request Statement', again demanding that I pay the £25. Again, I e-mailed the company, this time sending the message to various departments in an attempt to get a response, which I finally did. The response indicates that a further error had occurred and I had in fact been credited the £25 twice. I have checked a more recent Credit Card statement and sure enough, I have received the credit twice. All this is entirely the company's error and I have to say, their process for chasing outstanding debt is not at all good, as none of the correspondence received prior to the e-mail response, explained that there had been a error and the rather lax efforts of the company to respond to me, leaves a lot to be desired too.

Ok, so you know the circumstances - do I have to give them their money back or is it their error and I should tell them "better luck next time"?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Imagine it was the other way round and you were accidentally charged twice for one product but when you call them to ask for a refund they said "better luck next time"

fish2000

eranou wrote: »

Imagine it was the other way round and you were accidentally charged twice for one product but when you call them to ask for a refund they said "better luck next time"

Thanks for the reply eranou - I take your point and I do agree. Morally, I should be giving them the money. However, if they had charged me twice, that would still be their error, not mine. Coupled with the fact they have ignored me for a fortnight and completely failed to explain why they were demanding this money in the first place, I am kinda reluctant to be overly accomodating. A question for them really; but why did they not phone me or e-mail (purchase online, so they had details) explaining the error?

Darksun

While the way they have gone about it is pretty awful, yes, you do have to pay the money back. Keeping the money would be classed as theft.

Equaliser123

Darksun wrote: »

While the way they have gone about it is pretty awful, yes, you do have to pay the money back. Keeping the money would be classed as theft.

No it wouldn't be theft. Not exactly moral, but not criminal.

Yours after 6 years...

Darksun

Equaliser123 wrote: »

No it wouldn't be theft. Not exactly moral, but not criminal.

Yours after 6 years...

Are you sure? I seem to remember a case a few years ago where someone ended up in prison because a significant sum of money was deposited into her bank account, and she went out and spent it all.

Edit: Found the story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6966683.stm

barvid

Equaliser123 wrote: »

No it wouldn't be theft. Not exactly moral, but not criminal.

Yes, it would be. Not giving it back will satisfy the 'appropriation' test required for theft. You can do so passively as well as actively.

Equaliser123

barvid wrote: »

Yes, it would be. Not giving it back will satisfy the 'appropriation' test required for theft. You can do so passively as well as actively.

No it wouldn't. There is no dishonest appropriation.

Can you quote a case where doing nothing constitutes an actus reus for theft?

fish2000

Thanks for all the replies, people. It's an interesting situation. Clearly, £25 is hardly anything to get hugely excited about, but it was the principle I was interested in, as much as anything. It is my intention to pay the money back, assuming the company in question continue to push for it. I certainly don't like the way the company has handled my entire order, as none of this would have happened if they had actually supplied what I had ordered. The fact they have then compounded the situation by making a further error, only added to the frustration. If the company had contact me is a less aggressive way (not a red letter demand), I wouldn't be so annoyed.

I will see what transpires, but ultimately, I think I will give them the money. That is, unless someone can 100% confirm I have no legal obligation to so, in which case I might be tempted to make them pay for their poor service. Harsh?.. probably, but sometimes the only way to get big companies to actually do a good job, it hit them where it hurts - consider it a fine! Don't think it will work out that way though

barvid

Equaliser123 wrote: »

No it wouldn't. There is no dishonest appropriation.

Can you quote a case where doing nothing constitutes an actus reus for theft?

No, because I really can't really be bothered to go searching for one when it's not really going to help the OP one iota, and quoting cases and pieces of legislation, generally out of context, is utterly meaningless for the vast majority of people who read these sorts of boards. A bit like the term actus reus, tbh. Suffice to say that appropriation, contrary to what most first-year law students seem to think, does not just mean putting something in your pocket and scarpering. If something comes into your possesion which you know isn't yours and you choose not to return it, that will count just as much. And as for dishonest? Well, if you know the money isn't yours (which is the case for the OP) then it's going to be pretty easy to tick that one off - yes, it's dishonest.

Another way of looking at it - just look at s3(1) TA 1968. "Any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounts to an appropriation, and this includes where he has come by the property (innocently or not) without stealing it, any later assumption of a right to it by keeping or dealing with it as an owner." Sounds like it fits the OP's circumstances if you ask me.

Now I've gone and quoted legislation when I said I wouldn't...

And finally, an even better way of looking at it without bothering with the Theft Act or the tedium of case law. You know that someone's put money in your account that isn't yours. You decide not to give it back. Is this (a) entirely legal and above board, or (b) the sort of activity that you wouldn't do if you were a fine upstanding citizen, and which you really wouldn't want to tell the police about?

That's a much more useful barometer to my mind than any legal mumbo jumbo.

I will accept that if you genuinely and reasonably think the money is yours (e.g. you're expecting a £250 payment and purely by chance the bank accidentally credits you with £250), then there's no element of dishonesty and therefore no theft.

Old_Wrinkly

What about charging the company (say £20?) for your time in rectifying the mistake, and knocking this off the amount you return to them?