Paid Twice by accident

Matt_Derz

In 2017 I did some freelance work for a company, They recently contacted over 3 years later say they accidently paid my invoice twice and that I owe them £500. I'm recently self employed and have no income at the moment and i'm not entitled to anything from the goverment during this time. I have no way of paying this back, can anyone lend me some advice of what I can do? 

Many thanks. 
Matt 

elsien

Have you checked that they are correct and you were indeed paid twice?

If so, make an arrangement with them to pay in installments as soon as you get some money coming in?
 They will have to take you to court to get anything out of you, which would involved an affordability check  and token payments if you lost the case, so other than getting in touch to ask for confirmation of the debt and to explain you're not ignoring them but not in a position to pay at the moment nothing is going to happen imminently. 

LilElvis

If you owe the money then they have six years in which to pursue the debt. Best to engage with them so that they don't escalate it to the small claims court which would add costs.

Grumpy_chap

Surely you have records to check whether they did or did not pay you the £500 twice.  If they did, you should probably have told them at the time.  

Manxman_in_exile

elsien said:

Have you checked that they are correct and you were indeed paid twice?

If so, make an arrangement with them to pay in installments as soon as you get some money coming in?
 They will have to take you to court to get anything out of you, which would involved an affordability check  and token payments if you lost the case, so other than getting in touch to ask for confirmation of the debt and to explain you're not ignoring them but not in a position to pay at the moment nothing is going to happen imminently. 

Elsien is right that you should check if they are telling the truth or not (they appear not to be very careful if they've paid you twice!) but don't rely solely on them for confirmation of the debt.  As Grumpy_chap suggests, can't you just check your own records and bank account?  If they've paid you twice, wouldn't you have noticed when checking your tax, reconciling bank account etc?  (Don't tell me you do freelance work that you don't monitor or pay tax on...  )

EDIT:  Reading your post again, you don't seem to be surprised or disputing that they claim to have paid you twice... were you already aware that they had?