Ex-employer keeps paying me

Helpme88xxxx

I’m desperately seeking help to allow me to sleep and eat again! 

My ex-employer (a large medical co-operation in the U.K. shall we say) has carried on paying me. I was unaware of this after taking some time to myself in September abroad. I wasn’t checking my bank statements as I assumed I wasn’t being paid and never had to put my hand in my pocket as I lived with family. October I was in a horrific car accident and again was left in a bit of a state so I’m sure you can appreciate I wasn’t going to be looking at statements. November is a better month. New job also. Checked my account and seen a bit more money than should be in the account . I looked further into this and seen the large medical company’s name. I’ve since found out they didn’t terminate my contract properly end of august. HR confirmed the termination and so did my manger on the day I terminated. However their protocol wasn’t followed through. I alerted their payroll department (trying to pay them back) desperate to get this sorted. They’ve told me they can’t help and it’s likely I’ll be paid for December also. As the manager hasn’t followed the procedure in place. I’ve contacted her over and over and haven’t had much help from her at all. I’ve been worried sick that it took me till the third payment to notice this and was scared and petrified I’d be done for fraud. 

Now I have had a few things come out of this certain card, so although I have most of the money as I never spent it - there’s some that is missing admittedly. Is there anything I can do to stretch the repay back? This type of situation during covid times isn’t welcome and I’ve honestly lost so much sleep being worried sick about it. I’m far from a theif or fraudster. 

TELLIT01

As the mistake in making the payments has been theirs, it's not unreasonable to expect to come to a repayment plan which is realistic for you.  Once you were aware of the overpayment you should have ensured that you didn't spend any of the additional money as you knew it was not yours to spend.

KatrinaWaves

Use the money that you were intending to use for the 'few things (that) come out of this certain card' (as you didnt expect the extra salary so wont have been spending that) and use that to top up the money you owe your employer...

Penguin_

It always amazes me how little attention people pay to their bank accounts. I check mine daily & know usually how much is in each account give or take a tenner.

OP, I'd pay as much back in one go as you can then offer to re-pay the balance in x installments.

Helpme88xxxx

Penguin_ said:

It always amazes me how little attention people pay to their bank accounts. I check mine daily & know usually how much is in each account give or take a tenner.

OP, I'd pay as much back in one go as you can then offer to re-pay the balance in x installments.

The only reason why I didn’t check as nothing was going in to or coming out of that account. I was abroad and had no reason to check it. Tbh after just being made redundant and having a major car accident, checking an account I wasn’t expecting money to go into was the least of my worries. I am indeed able to pay all of it back. Soon as I started using that card again I checked and seen the money was higher than it should be. I contacted them straight away. 

pinkshoes

Helpme88xxxx said:

 I’ve been worried sick that it took me till the third payment to notice this and was scared and petrified I’d be done for fraud. 

Now I have had a few things come out of this certain card, so although I have most of the money as I never spent it - there’s some that is missing admittedly. Is there anything I can do to stretch the repay back? This type of situation during covid times isn’t welcome and I’ve honestly lost so much sleep being worried sick about it. I’m far from a theif or fraudster. 

And relax! Not your mistake.

All you need to do is firstly notify them of THEIR mistake in writing, then secondly repay the money.
If some of it is missing then by the sounds of it you have time to replace the missing money. 

You will only have trouble if you refuse to repay money that is not yours, which is not the case here. Pay back what you can, then tell them on what date you will pay the remainder.

Helpme88xxxx

pinkshoes said:

Helpme88xxxx said:

 I’ve been worried sick that it took me till the third payment to notice this and was scared and petrified I’d be done for fraud. 

Now I have had a few things come out of this certain card, so although I have most of the money as I never spent it - there’s some that is missing admittedly. Is there anything I can do to stretch the repay back? This type of situation during covid times isn’t welcome and I’ve honestly lost so much sleep being worried sick about it. I’m far from a theif or fraudster. 

And relax! Not your mistake.

All you need to do is firstly notify them of THEIR mistake in writing, then secondly repay the money.
If some of it is missing then by the sounds of it you have time to replace the missing money. 

You will only have trouble if you refuse to repay money that is not yours, which is not the case here. Pay back what you can, then tell them on what date you will pay the remainder.

Thanks so much for taking the time out to reply to me. You’ve  helped put my mind at ease 

GHolmesAdmin

Put the overpaid money into a seperate account, wait for them to ask for it back, when they do give it back; no need to stress over it or waste time chasing people about it.

Manxman_in_exile

See my post on your other thread

TBagpuss

As others have said, you won't be done for fraud - you alerted them as soon as you became aware of the error.

They will need to arrange with you for you to repay the money and they will need to update records with HMRC to ensure that the tax position is sorted. 
confirm to them in writing that you wish to make arrangements to refund the overpayments and ask that they confirm to you how much is owed and where to transfer it, and also ask that they confirm what information they summitted to HMRC, and when, so that if they failed to di your P45 correctly, or have paid tax and NI on the payments, you can get that corrected as well. 

Since it sounds as though their payroll department is a bit slack you may want to call HMRC yourself to check the position and find out whether you need to do anything to correct your tax / NI records - I am not sure whether you or your former employer will need to deal with them to straighten things out but either way, you won't be in trouble, you haven't done anything wrong. 

Manxman_in_exile

I don't think it's a payroll failing - it's a management failure - such overpayments are common in the NHS.

The OP shouldn't need to worry about tax etc as the payroll element of the Electronic Staff Record (or whichever version of that system the NHS currently uses) will automatically adjust all that.