Can you believe this? A company that I’ve been doing a little internet work for over the last two years or so just discovered that they’ve been overpaying me by about $80 since FEBRUARY! Now I either have to pay them back to the tune of about $500 or do a ton of extra work for them to pay off my debt.
What kind of company doesn’t notice that they have a glitch in their payment system for over 6 months?
A few months ago when I noticed that my payments had increased I wondered what was up, but the site that I do work for them on had increased in rank and popularity so I thought I’d just had a pay increase. Unfortunately their system is kind of hard to get into and it’s difficult to see just how they pay for different tasks. So I don’t consider this my fault although I guess in hindsight I should have thought to question them about the payments.
This totally sucks. I hope that the extra stuff I’m going to have to do to pay off the debt doesn’t ruin my site! Argh!
BTW I’m purposely not mentioning the company name as it’s against their TOS and well I don’t want to suffer a slap from the internet gods – even though it’s not this site that is involved in the glitch.
You know that really sucks! It happened to my father once as well. A business partner of his contacted him after summing up 3 years of payments and had come to the conclusion that he in total had missed to bill my da with $20 000! I mean come on! He hadn’t kept track of his own billings.
I guess what to learn from this is to really keep an up to date book yourself. And when you get that little extra cash, as in your case, return it …
Take a shot at negotiating a better resolution with them. They have some culpability for the situation, so they shouldn’t come out of this with no losses.
If I were you I would ask them to split the difference. They lose half the money, you make up for the other half.
Are they the only two options available to you?
Your countrys laws may differ but where I’m from a company cannot legally demand the return of that money if as an employee you could not have ‘reasonably realised’ that there had been an overpayment; nor can they take it out of your future wages without your consent.
I’d get some legal advice if I were you..
That well and truly sucks. You do have options… but if this is a client you want to keep working with, being pleasant and professional while negotiating what you want is going to be key. Goodluck!
Like you said. That does suck. I would look further into finding out who is completely liable. Their incompetency shouldn’t put you in the hole like this.
I hate to say it, but if they made a payment error you should just suck it up and do what’s right. Had they underpaid you I bet that you would have contacted them asap. 🙂 It sucks I know, but at least you will sleep well at night knowing you did the right thing.
I would go for the 50/50 split if you can make it work, whatever the outcome, you should increase your charges to them in future.
Good Luck
Ouch! That sucks for you. I hope you get it done quickly so you can get back to your normal routine.
Its not your fault that the company over estimated how much it should pay you. That’s just stupid and I’m sorry for what happened to you.
I had this happen to me when I left a job, they overpaid me and then asked for the money back. In the UK, there is a law that if you believe you were entitled to that money (I genuinely thought I was repaid tax owed to me), you could use that as an excuse for not paying it back.
I wrote back to them and they never contacted me again.
However, if you knew it had gone up, a polite email to check would have helped you get out of this mess.
I’m in the process of finally changing themes and I keep procratinating on it. I’m still using Kubrick, . . . yeah.