[Urgent help please] Work overpaying sick pay

charruss

Hello everyone! I apologise if this is a mess, or doesn't make any sense. I am so stressed right now because of all of this.

I'll start with the background of it all, so I'm sorry if it's a long read.

Back in December 2021,I was off sick from my now resigned from workplace, because of workplace-induced stress and whatnot. I kept in regular contact with my managers and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. On Feb 1st, 2022 I resigned and gave them my four-week notice (I was still off sick at the time), which I got a reply from my manager who acknowledged it and said her pleasantries before I didn't contact them again until March 30th, 2022. When I contacted them I asked them about how my equipment would be sent back as it was my first WFH job and I didn't know if they needed me to fill out a form or anything, to which my manager apologised for the fact that I had to chase them up and added another manager into the email as the previous manager wanted the newly added one to deal with it at that time. (The new Manager will be labelled J)

I noticed I had gotten paid in March and didn't think anything of it as I knew that they would pay me for the remaining holidays that I hadn't taken, this didn't seem odd until I got a physical payslip in April. The earnings side of the payslip had my remaining holiday pay on the side which amounted to £612 but under it had the sum minused so the earnings were 0. The left side of the payslip said Advanced Debt, and it said I owed them £1215.85 which was a huge shock to me, as I hadn't heard about any of this when I was emailing and calling management.

After chasing up the payroll team about this Debt, I then received an email from the Overpayments team stating I was overpaid by £1581.95, and it was due to a Late leaver notification that has been received by HR, basically stating I had left the company without giving them notice and that I owed them the sick pay they paid me in February and March, which at first I thought was the holiday pay owed but it was another Payroll mistake. I wasn't too happy about this and sent them all the proof and the emails that I had about me giving in my notice for four weeks and that someone purposefully entered the wrong date into my leaving packet. They soon came back and rectified the situation, and squashed the Feb/March mistakes but still pushed that I owed £1215.85. 

I emailed them about the 60 hours of holidays that were owed to me (The £612) and why it wasn't taken off of the balance, to which they replied by saying that it had been but when I checked all of my payslips the balance has always been the same since December 2021. When I checked the payslips that I get through the company website and then the payslips they had sent to me two months after I pointed out the mistake they made, I noticed that the March payslip on the company website stated I was paid £443.21 in SSP, but then the payslip changed and sent me stated that they had paid me £612 in holiday money and minused the £443.21 SSP from it, and tax/NI which meant I got paid -£4.97. This was super confusing as I only got the SSP, and feel that they're doing this to protect the mistake that they had just made.

(Payslip I got from the company website)

(Payslip they had changed and sent me two months later)

They sent me an email that had been sent to J on Feb 4th, stating that I would have to pay the company £50 a month because of the overpayment if I stayed within the company or the payment would be taken from my final payment if I had left, which it never was. I was unaware of any of this contact until the Overpayments team emailed me about it on June 10th. 

The back and forth is still going on, and now it has gotten even worse on June 29th, 2022. I received another physical copy of a payslip thinking that this might be a conclusion to this long horrible fight, but no. They sent me a payslip basically saying they paid me £1303.94 this month, which again confused me, I checked my bank and have received nothing from them. I emailed the company and they replied with ' The amount of £1,303.95 was generated due to the change of leave date, this was flagged to payroll as incorrect and they have recalculated June’s payslip and advised the correct amount owed for June is £154.70. This is for your holiday hours, however, you have not received this amount as it has been used to reduce the overpayment down to £1,061.12. ' Which literally doesn't make any sense when the payslip doesn't even mention anything about the debt and looks like the payslips I used to get when I worked there and I hadn't even received anything in May. I had to report this to Universal Credit, as this will affect my benefits this month and once I checked on July 2nd I realised that it will. This company has messed up so many times that now this month I won't even be able to pay for rent or even any necessities. 

(June Payslip below)

I left that work place because it was super toxic, and I had a mental breakdown at the beginning of my shift causing me to have to get in touch with the crisis team at the time. The management knew this and I kept in contact at every step of the way, even having formal meetings with them about it all. The contact became near impossible once I had left and wanted to fix all of this mess, and I still to this day have the equipment at my home as they still won't get in touch with me about picking it up. The only contact I seem to get is them asking for me to pay them this money back and I'm really in dire need of help about this all as I don't know what to do, I've never been in a situation like this before and I called ACAS but they cannot help since I don't work there anymore. This company is a billion-pound empire, and I don't know how to fight this as at every turn they make mistakes with everything but still demand money from me. This whole situation has taken a huge toll on me and my mental health. I can't check my emails or I get worried every time mail comes through the door because I don't know what is going to happen. If anyone knows anything or can help a little, please, please, please. Thank you so much.

Mistakes made by the company:
Messed up sick pay.
Changed my leaving date so they didn't have to pay me but still mucked up and did.
Messed up my P45 three times.
Reported false figures to HMRC about my ingoings.
Constantly changing my Payslips after I pointed out that they had made a huge mistake.

Brie

I suggest you send them a very simple letter asking them to outline how much you were paying paid, month by month from when you went off sick to the last payslip. Just keep it nice and simple "please tell me" without saying much about what you think should have happened beyond perhaps a "I'm confused by the correspondence and amended payslips so to have this outlined simply would be a great help".

End the letter stating that once all the information has been received you can look at what needs to be done next (don't suggest you will repay anything at this point).  That leaves the onus on them to provide a coherent record of what they believe to be correct for you.

Once this is received you should sit down and check that the amounts of money they claim you have been paid have actually been received.  Then you should check what date they are using for when you left.  You may have said 4 weeks notice or whatever but they may have amended that to the end of a pay period - as long as it's not sooner than the notice required in your T&Cs.

Should it then be apparent that they have overpaid you a decision can be made about what needs to be done next.  I was overpaid by an employer and agreed to pay them back at a rate of £10 a month which meant they had to wait about a year to get all the money back.  That seemed fair to me as they were the ones that made the mistake.

If they are not willing to give you any information then submit a formal SARs request (it's free and would include every bit of information they hold for you on paper or in IT including all the payroll bumpf)  They are legally obliged to respond within a set period.

charruss

Brie said:

I suggest you send them a very simple letter asking them to outline how much you were paying paid, month by month from when you went off sick to the last payslip. Just keep it nice and simple "please tell me" without saying much about what you think should have happened beyond perhaps a "I'm confused by the correspondence and amended payslips so to have this outlined simply would be a great help".

End the letter stating that once all the information has been received you can look at what needs to be done next (don't suggest you will repay anything at this point).  That leaves the onus on them to provide a coherent record of what they believe to be correct for you.

Once this is received you should sit down and check that the amounts of money they claim you have been paid have actually been received.  Then you should check what date they are using for when you left.  You may have said 4 weeks notice or whatever but they may have amended that to the end of a pay period - as long as it's not sooner than the notice required in your T&Cs.

Should it then be apparent that they have overpaid you a decision can be made about what needs to be done next.  I was overpaid by an employer and agreed to pay them back at a rate of £10 a month which meant they had to wait about a year to get all the money back.  That seemed fair to me as they were the ones that made the mistake.

If they are not willing to give you any information then submit a formal SARs request (it's free and would include every bit of information they hold for you on paper or in IT including all the payroll bumpf)  They are legally obliged to respond within a set period.

Thank you so much for this help!! I'll get right on it.

TELLIT01

Send a copy of your e-mail conversation with the manager to HR, so they can see the timeline of you handing in your notice and your manager's response to it.  Explain why you believed the money received was final salary and outstanding holiday pay.  Request a detailed breakdown of their calculation of what they believe you owe them.  If they are correct it will obviously have to be repaid but insist that it cannot be repaid in a single payment and offer them what you believe you can afford on a monthly basis.