Salary Overpayment.

[Rhythm Junkie]

My mate was overpayed two months salary and as the company didn't reclaim it within six months it became their loss. Has it been six months?

[Elmo]

I deal with overpayments every day. Basically, they'll chase you twice, send it to the lawyers, they then discuss with the company if it's worth their while taking you to court/calling in the baylifs. If they want to persue it, they'll go to all sorts of lengths to get it back, if not, the company decides to soak it up.

incidentally, all it can take is your manager to not tell HR that you've left for you to get overpaid, and in those circumstances, it's quite often only by chance that they realise and ask for it back. If HR don't know you're leaving, how are they meant to stop your pay? It isn't their fault either.

Oh, and also, if you decide you're leaving, and not working your notice, and your manager lets us know, but it's past payroll run date, you'll get over paid, and you'll be asked for that back as there was no physical way of stopping you from getting that other than recalling your pay, which wouldn't be the method of choice (obviously this would only happen if you're paid in advance of the hours/days you work)

fuck sake, it's a friday night! *snaps out of work mode*

[~LEE~]

Right, i work as a debt collector (yeah, i know, boo, hiss and all that jazz. Pays the bills though.)

Your only real problem is if they pass it for external debt collection and inform Equifax or Experian or the like then it can really fuck your credit.

Bailiffs are illegal in Scotland so no-one will come and take your telly. they may use the term "Field Agents" or something similar, and play it up to sound bad, but its a guy who comes to your door to ask for payment if you dont answer your phone. He cant do anything else

Unfortunately, iv seen companies take debtors to court for £75, but it depends on who is owed the money. They simply whack all the court costs over to the debtor to repay.

If it goes as far as court, the court will issue a 28 day decree which means you have 28 days to clear the amount or face a 6 year default upon your credit (you will get nothing, no mobile phone, no credit cards, no car finance, no mortgage, for 6 years)

With regards to court, Sam may be the best person to ask about that.....

Your best bet, if it goes as far as external debt collection, is to co-operate and offer up a payment plan of whatever you can "afford"

By this i mean you offer them your Income and Expenditure details, all the money you have coming into your household, minus all your essential bills, leaving you with your disposable income of say £10 per month spare.

The best part about income and expenditure is some of the things you can get away with paying out on. Obviously there is your rent, council tax, gas, electric, water, house phone, mobile phone, tv license, food, housekeeping, insurance etc etc, but you can add some classics:

Say you smoke 40 Cigs a day, its an addiction so they cannot dispute it.

Say you have 2 large dogs they eat their weight in food each month.

Say you are an alcoholic and your booze costs £200 per month. once again, addiction, they cannot touch you for it.

there are many more but im sure you get the picture.

if you do have any further problems or it does go for debt collection, gimme a shout and il give you all the info i can to help.

[Tigger]

I deal with the credit reference agencies with my work and do compliance checks for the collections department and I'm not sure about it affecting your credit file - you have to sign an agreement for someone to even look at your credit file let alone place an entry on it (excluding for criminal investigation or CCJs/Bankruptcies etc) so even if this was passed to a debt collection agency, as it isn't an actual breached credit agreement I'm not sure that they can register a default against you. Sorry I can't be clearer but I deal with credit cards so my speciality is that side of things but I do know the basic legalities of it.

[~LEE~]

yup, thats correct.

in dealing with utility bills, which are bound by statute law (you dont need to sign to agree to the terms and conditions of a contract, you simply need to "plug in" in a house to be bound by them) there is no signature so they cant* affect your credit.

*there are some loopholes, none of which need to be discussed in here.

However, in taking up a post/position of employment within a company, you do usually need to sign a contract which would also entail details of your salary, payment etc and they may have small print somewhere that could catch up with you...

[Puppy]

Having worked in overpayments, it wont go on your credit report as its not been subject to a credit agreement.

What you may find is that it's in the small print of your contract that you have to repay any incorrect salary, even if its an official error on thier part. It may get referred to debt collectors, and they can argue you were aware of receiving monies you were not entitled to as you had already quit but were still receiving salary.

[nevali]

It's worth noting that terms in employment contracts aren't necessarily enforceable, though—clauses regarding overpayments are really so that they have additional leverage if they notice they've overpaid you while you're still employed by them, but don't really have any bearing beyond that—once you've left the employ, with some minor exceptions, the contract has been terminated and the conditions don't apply.

Beyond that, I've seen all manner of crap in employment contracts, and there's a whole heap of it that's often put in speculatively—they hope nobody will argue the toss, and roll over if somebody does, because they know that if it came down to it they couldn't possibly enforce the clause (which does cause all sorts of fun if they don't stipulate somewhere that specific invalid clauses in the contract cannot be used to invalidate the contract as a whole).