My son has not been paid for his work -- what to do???

arunadasi

My son worked on two days as a freelance masseur in a posh London spa -- really high class, very expensive. This one. They owe him £150 but have not paid him. This was two months ago! WHat can he do to get his money? He has called and written them a few times; a lot of promises but no action was the result.

GothicStirling

My advice would be to go down to the CAB.

I had an employer do this to me about 2 years ago. They used every excuse under the sun: 'we lost your bank details' and 'it was the incorrect sort code.' It took me four months of hell to squeeze £300 out of them.

bendix

arunadasi wrote: »

My son worked on two days as a freelance masseur in a posh London spa -- really high class, very expensive. This one. They owe him £150 but have not paid him. This was two months ago! WHat can he do to get his money? He has called and written them a few times; a lot of promises but no action was the result.

Why doesn't he just go and talk to them in person? Seriously, why does it have to be so hard? Isn't it just plain common sense?

joeyp

I had a very similar problem with my Daughter.

At the age of 16, upon leaving school, (2 years ago) she was offered an Apprenticeship in a daycare nursery. She worked there for around 4 weeks and was told that the first week was an unpaid trial.

After 4 weeks, she decided that it wasn't for her and felt that the employers weren't very supportive, so decided to take up an offer of a place in college.

Following weeks and weeks of calls and letters to and from the employer (including several insults aimed at my Daughter), she had still not received a penny!

Eventually, we took the case to an Employment Tribunal (at which the employer didn't show and just sent a letter explaining why she hadn't paid my Daughter - all ridiculous excuses) The judge found in favour of my Daughter and awarded her £140.00. However, this woman who employed my Daughter has STILL never paid up and I found the process to go about enforcing the tribunal's order through the court so confusing, that I gave up (silly, I know!)

I sincerely hope you have better luck with the money owing to your son

Jo x

Russe11

Issue a county court claim, should be free for a low earner.

arunadasi

Why doesn't he just go and talk to them in person? Seriously, why does it have to be so hard? Isn't it just plain common sense?

Because it is in central London, he lives an hour away in a Sussex village, he has another job, and can't get there so easily or quickly or cheaply.
People are so quick to pass judgement...

Hammyman

arunadasi wrote: »

My son worked on two days as a freelance masseur in a posh London spa -- really high class, very expensive. This one. They owe him £150 but have not paid him. This was two months ago! WHat can he do to get his money? He has called and written them a few times; a lot of promises but no action was the result.

Self employed then so all the comments about employment tribunerals and the like are irrelevant and you're not going to get anywhere with county court if you've not given them additional chances to pay.

If he has not sent them an invoice, he needs to. I won't pay someone without an invoice because I have no way of proving to the tax man where the money went if I get audited.

He needs to send them a reminder invoice and a statement of account with say 14 days to pay and then a final demand with 7 days to pay and then take them to court if they don't pay.

Just out of interest, has he registered as self employed with HMRC or is this back pocket money?

hcb42

Send the invoice, follow it up with a phone call to FC to confirm receipt.

arunadasi

Thanks. I'll tell him to do that. It's his first job so he's a bit green around the ears!

joeblack066

He needs to put his terms on the invoice as well, ie "I understand this invoice will be settled wihing 14/30 days" or whatever he sees fit. I would think that they wouldn't be able to pay until correctly invoiced due to their own financial procedures.

bramble1

^ I've learnt that even when you include your terms people still like to take their own sweet time. Phoning the accounts department daily helped us when someone was overdue paying by 2 weeks.