Double paid almost a year after leaving - and being asked to pay it back

ElefantEd

Grumpy_chap said:

However, banks seem to want to have cake and eat cake here.  Whenever there is a thread of an individual accidentally sending funds to the incorrect destination (either fraud or online data entry), the banks seem to respond along the lines of "your mistake, nothing we can do"

Banks have upped their game in recent years by double checking that you actually want to send the money, that the recipient's name matches the account number and so on. But at the end of the day, they are only doing what you tell them. In the same way, if you posted off £10 to your favourite relative as a birthday present, but accidentally wrote the wrong address, would you expect the Royal Mail to give you your money back, or make efforts to retrieve the letter from the wrong person?

I am no great fan of banks, and certainly they could do better in many respects, but the mistake is not usually on their part. If it was, they would certainly be obliged to repay you.

Ath_Wat

Grumpy_chap said:

I entirely agree that the OP should repay the double payment received.

Also that the fictitious £100k should be repaid.

However, banks seem to want to have cake and eat cake here.  Whenever there is a thread of an individual accidentally sending funds to the incorrect destination (either fraud or online data entry), the banks seem to respond along the lines of "your mistake, nothing we can do"

How is this the bank having their cake and eating it?  They will not recover the wrongly sent amount in either case.

However where, as here, the sender of the money knows who they sent it to, they can claim it back without the bank's involvement.  Just as they could if they had given him an extra £500 in an envelope by mistake.

This is nothing to do with banks.

yessuz

Penguin_ said:

I could understand if the amount was made in one amount, i.e. £780 but as there were 2 identical amounts I would have queried it when the transfers had been made.

Overpayments & mistakes do happen with payroll unfortunately, they should have contacted you earlier to let you know but the long & short of it is you do owe it.

Why would I query? to be fair, they owed me ~1k per quarter. there's 2 quarters. I presumed that they paid for each quarter in a separate as "compensation" for not paying it in time. 

Dakta

I took someone to small claims yonks ago when they didn't want to pay an invoice, situations bit different but it was still money genuinely owed. He wouldn't pick up the phone and I think the address was either fake or a relatives as we got no response to it, he did have a social media presence and post ads on gumtree etc, we built a picture over a few evenings and he did end up with a CCJ

That was over a relatively small sum, I never actually got it but it was an interesting OSINT exercise if anything. 

If the previous employer cant contact the employee and its a small sum might not be worth it, if its a large some they might put some energy into it but I dont think it changes the fundamentals, if they can find a way to contact you then the cogs can turn