Overpayment of wages - promissory estoppel

[harveyharv89]

Hello, im looking for some help / advice as an ex-employer if trying to collect money for over-paid wages 2 years ago.

I worked for my ex employer, Sky TV back in 2018 and during my employment I changed my hours from full time to part time.

Everything at Sky was done via your manager and a portal; I submitted a flexible working request, this was then accepted by my manager who put in a request to amend my contractual hours & pay. You could view your rota / hours via the online rota system and a few weeks my new part time hours were showing on my rota and my annual leave allowance had been adjusted. I assumed everything had been sorted.

However, when I was paid my first part time pay it was higher than I expected (but still less than the full time wage I had before) so I asked my manager why and he explained it was pro rated down etc. and he checked the system and confirmed that my hours were adjusted so if thats what I was paid it would be correct.

For the following 6 months I received the same pay each month. Then one month i checked my payslip and I had a £700 deduction. I immediately contacted my manager who said to call payroll. They advised me this was due to an overpayment of wages of over £3000 as I had still been being paid for more than my part time hours. Prior to this I had had no correspondence or information warning me, they simply just deducted my pay. I asked why no-one had told me and they said they had been in contact with my manager - quite useless to me as my manager had not passed on the messages!

They then said they would amend my pay if I set up a payment plan to pay back the overpayment. I couldn't afford to not have the money that month so I agreed, as I assumed if I had been wrongly paid then I must pay this back. My payment plan was agreed and they would deduct this each month from my pay.

I made a couple of payments on my payment plan but then left Sky and have been working elsewhere for 2 years. Today I have received a letter from Zinc Credit Management advising they are working on behalf of Sky to recoup the remaining money (£2,300).

From researching online I have come across a protection clause called 'promissory estoppel' whereby you must meet the following criteria for qualify when defending the overpayment of wages;

1. That their employer made representations of fact that entitled them to believe that the sum if money overpaid was theirs; and
2. That the employee has “changed their position” (by spending some or all of the money) and in doing so acted in good faith and without notice that their employer wished to recoup the overpayment; and
3. That the employee was not primarily at fault for the mistake

To address each point;

1. I was only informed of the overpayment via the one phone call I had to the payroll team. I have never received anything in writing confirming the amount owed until I received this Zinc letter.
2. My position has changed as I spent all the money at the time, in good faith, as I was led to believe this was my normal pay. I had no reason to question it when my system reflected my new hours, my rota reflected my hours, my annual leave entitlement reflected my new hours and my manager confirmed my pay was fine. I was also paid this for 6 months without being made aware this was wrong or that they wished to recoup the overpayment.
3. I was not at fault for the mistake, this was a payroll mistake.

So, can anyone help me on if I could feasibly fight this stating promissory estoppel? If so, would I be better to write directly to Sky and explain the above or do I contact Zinc? I understand that Zinc are just 'managing' the debt, they have not bought the debt so technically can I still communicate with Sky and not a the debt agency?

Or... am I best to ignore the letters in the hope it may go away?

Thank you in advance for any help & advice give.

[Manxman]

When you left Sky, how much notice did you have to give and did no-one at Sky (your manager and/or payroll) raise the question of the outstanding balance on the repayment? Normally you'd expect them to try to recover that from your pay before you left. So nobody raised it with you after you gave notice and before you left, and Sky haven't approached you in the two years since you left?

The bad news is that it's usually very difficult to fight an overpayment reclaim on the basis of estoppel. Your strongest argument might be that you queried your part-time payments with your manager at the time, and he confirmed that you were being paid correctly according to the payroll system. (Do you have any evidence of you doing this? emails etc?) Thus from that point you acted in good faith, spent the money you thought you were entitled to because your manager had confirmed you were paid correctly, and none of it was your fault.

However, Sky then tried to take money out of your pay and upon querying this it would seem that you accepted you had been overpaid, and agreed a payment plan with them. (What you should probably have done is demand they provided a detailed breakdown of the overpayment so you could check it, and you should have argued the estoppel point then, before agreeing a repayment plan).

I fear that by agreeing a payment plan and making some repayments you've basically acknowledged that you owe them the money. Then, after leaving and ceasing the repayments, it could be argued you are no longer acting in good faith.

So, I'm not a lawyer and can't give you any legal advice. What I would suggest you do is gather together all the evidence and papers you have (including any and all papers going back to when you changed from full to part-time) and visit your local Citizens' Advice Bureau and ask their advice as to what you should do.

If the people chasing you are only debt collectors (and not bailiffs?) my understanding is they can't really do anything so your best course of action might be to do nothing and see what happens. The time to start worrying is if SKY or anyone else send you a "Letter before Claim" saying they'll sue you unless you pay up. That's the time to do something. (You may want to start setting money aside now in case that happens). [EDIT: You should only do nothing if you are sure they are only debt collectors and not bailiffs enforcing a court judgment]

But as I say I'm not a lawyer and can't give legal advice so don't just rely on what I say. Go to Citizens' Advice and see what they say. See if you get more responses here.

[harveyharv89]

Hello!

Thank you for your detailed reply, its really helpful

I had to give 1 months notice when I left sky and I worked my full notice with no notifications about my payment plan. They did take some from my final pay though.

Regarding when I agreed to a payment plan, I felt I had to agree as I had been left with around £100 in my payslip and the lady said they would only make a bacs payment if I set up a payment plan so I was backed into a corner with that one

The company is Zinc credit management (wewanttosayyes.co.uk) and as far as I can see they are just debt collectors. They have sent me a further letter today saying they need to me to get in touch but thats it.

I will take your advice and contact citizen's advice! Il also have to get in touch with Sky to request the dates of my employment changes as they didn't send me anything in writing - could that be a risky step by making contact?

If you have any past experience with these cases, how likely (in your opinion) are they to actually sue me or take me to court? do these cases normally just go away after a few chase letters?

Thanks again for your help!