Company pension wanting to reclaim payments?

jh2009

jamesd wrote: »

Given your letter's apparent contents you should expect them to take you to court to recover the £1,440 received between the age of 18 and 21. They will probably make at least one more try to avoid that, though.

This will not happen. I've worked in pensions for 10 years in several schemes and have seen such cases several times and have NEVER seen such a case end up in court. This is mainly for cost effective reasons as the scheme would have to pay costs to recover what to the scheme is a very small amount.

The only cases which go to court or end up in police action are those of outright fraud, e.g. cases where people deliberately keep on cashing cheques, or keep bank accounts open after a pensioner dies. (e.g. as an example - Mr A Smith dies, his son also Mr A Smith keeps cashing cheques for Mr A Smith and doesn't tell the scheme his father has died.). Even in some of these cases these are written off if only small amounts are involved.

These cases eventually get written off or settled, depending on the response of the OP.

jh2009

kgldsun wrote: »

JH2009. Thank you so very very much for taking the time to explain the above to me. I have this evening wrote a very good letter, with the help of many of your pointers and basicaly ended with telling them to take whatever steps they feel is necessary. I added that I, nor my son has the finances to repay the debt in one instance, and would require evidence if it is a legal requirement. I am in receipt of no other payments from them which is lucky I suppose in some ways. I also certainly did not set out to defraud and a couple of years is a long time with no contact from them or recap as to what the situation was/is.
I also suggested they contact the necessary education dept, from their original details as I cannot be held accountable for somebody whom is not my responsibilty. Remembering data protection etc. They must obtain for themselves whatever it is they require.
I forgot to mention they are also requesting a one off payment of £50ish for the month of march being an error! (1 Month after my sons 21st)
I will keep you posted. Once again thank you so much for taking the time to write a valuable peice.

I think morally you are doing the right thing in responding.

You are spot on in your response, and right to point out any financial difficulties you both have, which isn't unreasonable given student finances/the fact you have been widowed.

Despite your responsilibity to tell them your son has left education, my guess is that they also have made an admin mistake not contacting you at least once a year to get you to reconfirm his continuation in education. If you pursued this as a complaint, I expect that point would go in your favour as they had a chance to mitigate some of their loss in that way and any process to do so clearly failed. You could argue £40 a month isnt a substantial payment to your account, so easy to miss.

To reassure you - it is highly unlikely in my experience that they will take you or your son to court. The most likely outcome is that you will pay them back all or part of it, or it will be written off.

I have a hunch that when they wrote to you, they had probably already written off the over payment and are hoping you are honest and repay them. I should probably not encourage it, but i would imagine if you ignored their letter and their follow up letters, that they would probably eventually write it off, especially given the fact that you receive no pension payment from them as a widow, so they have are totally reliant on your co-operation. The only other option would be a court battle but for sheer cost effective reasons and with no guarantee even if they win of you making any payment, that they are more likely to write it off and cut their losses.

dunstonh

The only other option would be a court battle but for sheer cost effective reasons and with no guarantee even if they win of you making any payment, that they are more likely to write it off and cut their losses.

That shouldn't be an issue as the amount is only about £720 and small claims court could be used.

At the end of the day, we don't know what they will do.

jh2009

dunstonh wrote: »

That shouldn't be an issue as the amount is only about £720 and small claims court could be used.

At the end of the day, we don't know what they will do.

Thats true. We don't know what action they will take.

But...... Based on my experience, every similar case i've seen in the several schemes i've worked in has been either:

1. Settled between the two parties
or
2. Written off (often as the party has refused to enter into discussions or repay the amount).

I've only seen the courts and police used on serious fraudalent cases, and only then when the amounts involved have been significant.

EternallyGrateful

dunstonh wrote: »

How do you know that?

I am omnipotent

dunstonh

EternallyGrateful wrote: »

I am omnipotent

I cant compete with that. game over