Overpaid now work asking for payment back

sniper786

Hi,

Just looking for some advice, I took some unpaid leave from my previous job a few months back but i have just received a letter from my previous employer that my line manager did not inform the payroll department early enough that i was on unpaid leave and thise caused an overpayment of salary by one month and a bit.

They have asked me to send them a cheque for the sum which is just over £2000. I did not realise this overpayment and have used the money for bills etc.

They say they will take legal action if the money is not received within 14 days but i cannot afford this. What should i do?

Savvy_Sue

You could write and offer to pay them, say, £500 per month over four months, but they don't, AFAIK, have to accept this.

But probably the first thing is to establish they they've done their sums right. It seems surprising that if you were on unpaid leave that you didn't notice £2000 in your account which shouldn't have been there ...

AP007

OP - how did you get £2k in your bank and not notice?

If you were away from work on Unpaid leave surely it was Unpaid not paid?

an9i77

There seem to have been a few threads of this nature lately. Do people think the money fairy just decided to be nice to them one month and put an extra load of cash in their account?

rome1067

We paid wages in to an ex employees bank account once and we could not get the money back. Once a BACS payment is produced you cannot stop it or recall it.

We did not pursue it and simply had to write it off. You need to take legal advice on this and if you do have to repay do it at £1 per week! It will probably cost them more in legal fees to actually take this to court and I imagine they are just hoping the letter will scare you in to repaying it.

What would they have done if you had moved and they didn't have your new address?

gb12345

rome1067 wrote: »

It will probably cost them more in legal fees to actually take this to court

It won't cost them more in legal fees to put in a claim through MCOL - particularly when the OP owes over £2k.

HiToAll

I just wonder what would happen if work hadn't paid you £2000 for one month you had worked and were supposed to get paid.

Would you want the payment or would you just right it off and not bother pursuing it?

rome1067

I meant if they used a solicitor. I think it would be hard to prove that this was overpaid though. You could say that it was supposed to be paid time off how could they prove otherwise? The manager might have verbally agreed to pay this there is just no way of proving it unless there is something in writing.

gb12345

rome1067 wrote: »

I meant if they used a solicitor. I think it would be hard to prove that this was overpaid though. You could say that it was supposed to be paid time off how could they prove otherwise? The manager might have verbally agreed to pay this there is just no way of proving it unless there is something in writing.

I very much doubt that unpaid leave will have been agreed with no paper-trail. Also, the OP says that the manager "did not inform the payroll department early enough".

They have no need to use a solicitor if they have a strong enough proof to convince a judge that the time off was unpaid. The judge will look at balance of probabilities and if the employer shows that the OP had already used all his holiday for the year (which I assume they had otherwise why take unpaid leave) then he is likely to decide that this was unpaid leave.

rome1067

But you dont know that theres a paper trail, and if there isn't then its harder for them to prove.

You would also not expect a manager to make costly mistakes like this but they did:)

gb12345

rome1067 wrote: »

But you dont know that theres a paper trail, and if there isn't then its harder for them to prove.

Equally, you don't know that there isn't a paper trail, so we are both just guessing. There maybe or there may not be - the only people who know that are the employers (and possibly the OP).

Your original post was incorrectly assuring the OP that he has nothing to worry about as the ex-employer will not take action to retrieve the money as it would cost them more than is owed. This is clearly not the case if they have the evidence to back up their claim.