Help! salary not paid

Tasha_Ready

Hi everyone.

I have a problem. I was told I would be paid my wages yesterday Friday on the 13th November as the 15th is on a Sunday (a date that they pay all employees salaries on the 15th each calender monrth) so basically a day before the weekend. Now they are adamant they have paid my salary yet there is nothing in my bank account.

They pay by BACS which I assume takes 3 days? yet other fellow employees got their salaries 12am midght Friday. I have contacted my payroll many times as well as HR and all claim I should have been paid by the 5pm Friday the lastest. I have a few questions if people can be kind enough to take the time to answer.

1. Since I am paid on the 15h every month does this mean my salary would be on THAT date regardless if its through BACS? i.e. can my wages come few days after the 15th or this against the law? am assuming they know even if some banks take few days to accept peoples money they make sure every employees wages is on THAT SPECIFIC DATE. correct?

2. I bank with Nationwide Building society and they claim to give it 3 days because its BACS yet my employers claim noway should wages come the day after its due, and are adamant it should have been in my account by now. What could the cause possibily be? I already confirmed my bank details with HR.

3. Is it possible my salary may be there today on a Saturday?

3. What can my employers do to rectify this issue? give me emergency/direct payment on Monday?

4. Lastly has anybody else recieved their wages a few days after it was iniated by your employers,? espeacially if you bank with Nationwide.

Also is it true that payroll would not know even if they did not have an employee's bank details? basically I was told since its automatically set up, all they do is press the initiate button to credit salaries and would not know whether they are sending it to the correct bank account or even if there was not a bank account.. Would they contact the employee if they believed there was no bank account?

If you guys can be kind enough to give your experiance, advice and opinion I would welcome that.

Thank you.

CKhalvashi

It may be there today, I don't know if Nationwide count it as a working day or not (some banks do, some don't).

It's not against the law to not pay a debt, although there may be a contractual issue here. Whether to take it up or not (assuming you've been there less than 2 years) will depend on whether you want to keep the job or not.

I can find my employees bank details on the payroll system if I really wanted to, even though on a day to day basis I don't.

I don't know the answer your Nationwide-specific question, as I don't bank with them and don't know in the office who does.

Your employer may be willing to lend you some money if it's not there on Monday. Best thing to do is ask them if you're really desperate.

robin58

It does very from bank to bank.

When I was working I was paid by BACS and see my money in my account but my fellow coworker with another bank still had to wait a further few hours.

What worries me more is the fact you are living from one wage packet to another.

I always had a bit of money in the bank to smooth over problems like this.

custardy

robin58 wrote: »

It does very from bank to bank.

When I was working I was paid by BACS and see my money in my account but my fellow coworker with another bank still had to wait a further few hours.

What worries me more is the fact you are living from one wage packet to another.

I always had a bit of money in the bank to smooth over problems like this.

Sounds top me it is the OPs first wage with this company.

tasha_ready1

Thank you guys.

First off this would have been my first wage/salary. I have been with this company since October the 5th, almost 8 weeks now, is this not idealy against the law? i.e. an employee waiting for their salary for more then 1 month? am just curious is all. My worry is both the bank and my employers claim they have done their bit and to contact each other to rectify this yet I am getting no where and do not know what to do. My employer is adamant they have sent my wages last morning (Friday) and even if its through BACS my money should have been in my account. My bank however claim oh if it's BACS it can come between Tuesday and Thursday, but the problem is my fellow co-workers have already recieved their salaries. So what possibily went wrong here? when I called in payroll earlier on to ask them to double check my bank details they were very confident that was not the issue, meaning they did not want to bother checking, is this not unethical?...

Is it true that even if HR have my correct bank details it does not mean the payroll department will? afterall it is HR who send the bank details to payroll right? so is there a possibility someone or some people at the payroll department could have missed digit and therefore sent my salary to a wrong account? would it not bounce back? would payroll not realise if salary went to a different/wrong account?

Is it not the duty of my company or at least their payroll team to at least re-check if they have the correct bank details speacially when an employee is claiing their wages have not been recieved?

lastly is it not also unethical to state that employees will get their salary on a certain date yet it can take more then 3 or 4 days to be accessed by the bank holder? does BACs really mean it can take 3 days or so for money arrive? but again like I said other employees have already recieved their wages. so I am really confused as to what to do.

What can my company do from here on in? make another payment through direct payment? it is not a matter of being desperate but the principle, considering I started on October the 1st and have yet to even recieved my first wage packet. I have bills, expense and direct debits to sort out. Even the money I had as a buffer has already gone, I never expected that I would have to wait 8 weeks or so for my salary.

Can they send a cheque perhaps? what do you guys think is the issue? wrong bank account details? someone in the payroll department making a mistake? I do however have a payslip but that does not tell you anything about if or when or where the money is gone.

So again I am worried here and don't know what to do they seem to brush me off telling me they will get back to me and/or adamant they have done their bit, and my bank claiming its not even on the system. So what usually happens in these situations? surely they will check their payroll to see if they gave my correct bank details? or do I wait further few days? but again this concerns me as other employees have recieved their salaries.. Whenever someone else pays me through internet banking I always recieve money in 20 minutes, my previous employers also sent my money on 1 day, that was BACs too.

Any more ideaos or advide guys?

p.s by the way can this have anything to do with reference roll number of Nationwide? I have a Flex Account but have no clue about reference roll numbers, surely a sort code and account number is enough right?

thanks

TheBanker

Do you have a wage slip and if so does it show your bank details?

There are a few things I think might have happened:
- You were not added to the payroll
- You were added to the payroll late, and missed the cut-off
- The wrong bank details were given to payroll so your payment has gone to someone else
- The correct details were given but payroll mis-keyed them into the system so the payment has gone to someone else
- There has been some kind of problem at the bank.

In five years of dealing with banking complaints, I never once came across a situation where a BACS payment had been sent correctly but not arrived. When payments were missing it was always the fault of the sender for using wrong details, sending to a closed account, not sending at all...

Your employer's payroll department need to investigate this and if they believe something has gone wrong in the banking system they should contact their bank.

Unfortunately I don't think making accusations of breaking the law or acting unethically will help. Payroll clerks can sometimes be a bit funny but if they won't help, can you ask your Manager to assist?

TheBanker

tasha_ready1 wrote: »

Thank you guys.
Whenever someone else pays me through internet banking I always recieve money in 20 minutes, my previous employers also sent my money on 1 day, that was BACs too.

The 20 minute payments are Faster Payments, not BACS. BACS is a 3 day service but employers know this and schedule their payments so they arrive in the employees' accounts on the correct day.

agrinnall

There is no roll number for Nationwide Flexaccount, each account has it's own unique sortcode and account number and that is the only information required for a payment to be made to you. If your employer has that correct then there's no reason why the payment should not reach you OK. If it hasn't been credited today then you need to take this up with your employer as they are the only ones who can request a trace on the payment (if they did in fact make it).

There is some advice from the CAB on late payment of wages here

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/rights-to-pay/#h-if-you-don-t-get-paid-or-you-are-paid-late

xylophone

If a system uses BACS, then you would expect that it would have been set up so that payment was received by the employee either on the calendar date or the working day (before or after) closest to it.

The point is that the employee needs to know, because he will almost certainly have SOs/DDs etc, which of the above it is.

I knew one company where employees would always receive their salaries in advance of the calendar date if that date fell on a weekend/bank holiday, but pensioners of the company (whose calendar date was different), would always be paid on the closest working day after it.

From what the OP has said, it would seem that he should have received payment on Friday as is the case with his fellow workers - if it is not there on Monday, then he will need to contact payroll ( as the initiator of the payment), and ask for an investigation of what has happened.

eskbanker

tasha_ready1 wrote: »

My employer is adamant they have sent my wages last morning (Friday) and even if its through BACS my money should have been in my account.

This is the crux of it - if they paid yesterday morning by BACS then that's a 3-day service so won't reach you until the middle of next week (if they use BACS then they'd have put through your colleagues' pay earlier in the week to reach them by yesterday). So, you need to find out from the payroll department exactly how it was paid, i.e. BACS or a faster service....

tasha_ready1 wrote: »

I have been with this company since October the 5th, almost 8 weeks now

Despite a stressful situation, it's always best to stick to accurate facts rather than exaggerating - October 5th was actually less than six weeks ago....

Thrugelmir

eskbanker wrote: »

Despite a stressful situation, it's always best to stick to accurate facts rather than exaggerating - October 5th was actually less than six weeks ago....

Also would have missed the payroll processing cut-off to be be paid in October I suspect.