Overpayment at work

india

Morning,


to cut a long story short I received a grievance payment from my employer due to an equal pay claim that was successful. I waited 6 months for the actual payment to be credited to me and although I kept asking from a breakdown I never received this I got the money in June.


This week I've got an e-mail from my employer saying they overpaid me by £1600.00 and I need to come in next week to discuss paying it back.


I used the money to clear debts I had and now I'm worried because i'll be in debt to them.


The payment took so long because they said management had to check the payment before it went out. Now I know the law on there side but I'm just very angry, why has it taken this long to realise and I don't want them to bully me into taking large sums of money out my wages because I would not be able to live on a smaller wage.


Any advice? Also I wonder whether there mistaken about the overpayment I don't even know how to work it out.

Kayalana99

I would first ask them to prove the over payment and ask for a break down of the original payment ...if they have over paid you though you will have to pay it back.

sangie595

india wrote: »

The payment took so long because they said management had to check the payment before it went out. Now I know the law on there side but I'm just very angry, why has it taken this long to realise and I don't want them to bully me into taking large sums of money out my wages because I would not be able to live on a smaller wage.
.

Assuming that you do owe them the money - and as the prevbious poster has said, you should ask for an explanation of this - then you will need to negotiate repayments. You may not be able to live on a smaller wage, but the reality is that you may have to - erroneous wages payments can be claimed directly from wages without your agreement provided the deductions do not go below the national minimum wage (unless you are in retail - the rules are different in retail); or even, in a final wage payment, the emmployer can take the lot. So they really don't need to bully you, and if you want to arrange manageable repayments it would be a good idea to thi9nk about what they are likley to realistically accept.

WestonDave

If its correct then it will be repayable.


However you would not be being unreasonable if you insist on receiving a breakdown of the original payment calculation along with a further calculation of why that was wrong, plus a period of maybe a week to consider what you can afford to repay each month. You have asked repeatedly over a period of time for a calculation to allow you to check their figures which they haven't provided so they cannot claim you should have known it was wrong and therefore not spent it.

india

thanks everyone. I'm meeting with them on Monday afternoon, where they'll supply a breakdown and an explanation and we'll take it from there.

tomtontom

Surely you can live on a smaller wage because your outgoings are now lower (due to the repaid debt)? As above, you can negotiate a repayment schedule, but it's not going to be as bad as you're thinking because your external debt situation is resolved.