Salary payment - missing bank transfer

Rania_ams

Hello All

I am looking for some advice regarding late payment of salary.

So to summarise I was due to be paid on 25 January and my salary never went in to the bank as usual - I notified my HR team the next morning and they said they would speak to finance and get back to me.  Basically after a lot of chasing from me I got an answer on Monday 30th January saying that everyone salary had been paid and no one else reported an issue so I should contact my bank (which I already did several times).  I again explained that my bank had advised that the sending bank must carry out the tracing process and they are not able to do it.  I had been asking for documents since the 26th January showing transaction reference and proof of payment - basically they sent me a snipping of a document and all it showed was my name, payroll number and what was to be paid to me.

Anyway I agreed to wait until 1st February one week after my payday to allow them to sort it - but nothing so I told my HR team I needed paid in order to pay my bills ect.  They refused but eventually agreed to give me £400 to tide me over - it was supposed to be paid on 2nd February by chaps but they sent it by bacs and I got it on 6th February.

I've been chasing them constantly this week and getting no where they keep telling me they believe the issue is my bank as they have been paying me to this account for the last 2 years with no issue.  I'm in constant contact with my bank who have tried their best to help but its stalemate.  They have told me depending on the bank it can weeks to resolve.

My predicament is I have been paid £400 since 19 December and I really need the rest of my salary to pay my bills ect.  Am I within my rights to demand payment of the remainder of my wages since its been 20 days since I was supposed to be paid. 

My work definitely aren't going to be forthcoming with the money it seems so I'm wondering from a legal point where I stand.  February payday is still 2 weeks ago and I don't have enough money to survive until then.

Many thanks
Rania

GingerTim

This sounds grim and I'm very sorry for the obvious stress. Are you in a union and if so, have you spoken to your rep? Union pressure has been required to pressure HR and payroll to resolve late payments at my place of work.

eamon

Bypass HR and go straight to Payroll. Double check that they have the correct bank account number. Only then can you go forward.

Devongardener

You need to speak to your finance department and insist they prove the transfer was processed and sent to your nominated account.   This is very easy for them to do, and they should be able to show you a redacted part of a bank statement showing the transaction.   Then ask them to contact their bank to check whether the payment was returned to them, if it wasn’t then your receiving bank must make a bigger effort to solve the issue.   If I was the employer (I managed a finance dept  for 35 years), if the payment really cannot be traced, I would consider paying you the balance and set up an interest free loan agreement that only becomes repayable if the missing payment appears, but a lot would depend on length of service and confidence in the reliability of the employee.  Good luck.

Rania_ams

So contacting payroll unfortunately isn't an option as HR won't give me any details for them - plus they are based in Asia so a different time zone from us which I believe is adding to the difficulty.

I have worked at this company for 6 years and I've used the same bank account for over 2 years.  

They are saying that their bank is taking a long time to respond to them with any details.

Meanwhile I spoke to citizen advice today who told me to contact ACAS so I will call them in the morning to see what they can advise.

goater78

It isn’t sensible to go to ACAS when dealing with an internal company issue like this. You need to escalate internally. If you have a manager ask them to assist you. Should be very easy for you to produce a bank statement and prove to your employer you haven’t been paid. 

TBagpuss

I think you need to go back to HR and say that this is unacceptable and tat they need to address the issue urgently because:
- You have not been paid property and this is causing significant hardship, you need them to pay the balance to you on the basis you will refund it if the original payment is ever traced.
- You need them to let you have details of what steps have been taken so far so you can pass these on your bank - e.g. when did they raise it with their bank to trace the payment and what is the current situation with that, details of the name/ contact details of the department / individual they have spoken to and any reference number so you can pass that information onto your bank 

You may also want to consider whether you want to arrange for them to pay you in a different way in your next pay - it's probable that this is a one off and there's been some sort of routing error - either someone mis-types a digit or there was a glitch somewhere, but until you know what the issue is you don't want to risk it happening again.

DO yuu have a manger or someone else senior who could help chase this for you - it doesn't sound as though HR is treating it wth any kind of urgency but a bit of pressure from someone further up the chain might help.

Savvy_Sue

TBagpuss said:

You may also want to consider whether you want to arrange for them to pay you in a different way in your next pay - it's probable that this is a one off and there's been some sort of routing error - either someone mis-types a digit or there was a glitch somewhere, but until you know what the issue is you don't want to risk it happening again.

I'd really hope that no-one is typing out everyone's bank details each month when the salaries are paid, so I'd go for glitch at some point, and not necessarily when the payment itself was made. 

Goodness knows I find it scary enough checking that the actual amounts we're planning to pay are accurate: if I thought we had to check every sort code and account number I wouldn't sleep ... 

TBagpuss

Savvy_Sue said:

TBagpuss said:

You may also want to consider whether you want to arrange for them to pay you in a different way in your next pay - it's probable that this is a one off and there's been some sort of routing error - either someone mis-types a digit or there was a glitch somewhere, but until you know what the issue is you don't want to risk it happening again.

I'd really hope that no-one is typing out everyone's bank details each month when the salaries are paid, so I'd go for glitch at some point, and not necessarily when the payment itself was made. 

Goodness knows I find it scary enough checking that the actual amounts we're planning to pay are accurate: if I thought we had to check every sort code and account number I wouldn't sleep ... 

Absolutely, I'd expect it to be set up and a regulars set of details, but if anything has changed on the employers end I'd also want to be very sure that they had checked it before doing the same thing again...