Payment issues with employment agency. please help!

majeedk

I hope the fellow members of this forum can help me out here as I am really stressed out with my situation and any advice will be really appreciated.

I work as a contractor for a Retailer through an umbrella company. My employer uses an agency (lets call them A ) that deals with all actions like HR, timesheets and salary etc for contractors. I was head hunted by another agency (let's call them B ) and we agreed on a daily rate of £200 during our discussions. But when I was about to be hired, agency B informed me that the employer wished to use their own agency A so my contract will be directly dealt with by A and agency B will have nothing to do with it anymore.

When I received the formal written contract from agency A the daily rate was £50 more than what I had discussed with agency B. I assumed that since they were out of the picture I was getting the extra money because it was the commission agency B was trying to pocket for themselves.

A six months contract was signed by both parties i.e agency A and by the umbrella company on my behalf. I was paid at the rate of £250 which was written on the contract . two months before contract end date I was offered a 3.5 months extension at the same rate of £250.

I have worked beyond the initial 6 months contract end date and ~6 weeks into the extension. This week I was contacted by agency A wanting to discuss another extension. During this conversation I was told that agency A had made an error as somehow they had found out that I had agreed to a lower rate with agency B. Hence they want me to pay them thousands of pounds back for the days I have invoiced them. The reason given was that they made an error and this money was not mine to keep and it isn't viable for them.

Furthermore, they have just sent an updated contract to the umbrella company effective from the start of this month for a rate of £200 without asking me if I wanted to go with it or not.

I have contacted the umbrella company involved for processing the payments, taxes etc. When I contacted them, their answer was that monied already paid can't be refunded as it was received as per the agreed contract.

Can kind members of this forum advise me on following aspects:

• Does a written and signed contract take precedence over any verbal or email discussions?

• Am I legally within my rights to keep extra £50 because it was written in my contract and the agency was paying me this amount willingly.

• Can the agency unilaterally change the terms of my contract after it is signed without my approval. In this case, I was just informed that it has been changed from the start of this month while a contract already exists and that is without giving me an option to have an opinion.

lesw

If you signed a contract for £250 then I doubt they can back out, especially over 6 months later.   Have you signed a new contract for £200? If not they are in breach of the contract you actually signed if they now want to pay you less.

majeedk

lesw said:

If you signed a contract for £250 then I doubt they can back out, especially over 6 months later.   Have you signed a new contract for £200? If not they are in breach of the contract you actually signed if they now want to pay you less.

Hi. Thanks for your response. I really believe that the agency is just trying maximise the profit after they found out that I was going to agree on a lower rate with different agency for this role. 

I haven't signed the revised contract. The agency sent it directly to the umbrella company. So I will definitely challenge that as it was issued without consultation with me.