Spurious Payment - what to do next...

[Mailman]

Yes she is. The owner of this loot dumped it on her doorstep!

Still doesnt mean she is entitled to keep it, especially since it was made in error.

Imagine this the other way, if you had made a payment to a business in error. Would you be happy if that business then refused to pay the money back?

Mailman

[EternalOptimist]

A few years ago I worked for medium sized company, they too had made a similar error of about £500, the recipient refused to cooperate.
The company was going through a cash-flow crisis and that measly amount made the difference and the company went into administration.
The employees lost their jobs, pensions and futures, it was a disaster for all concerned.
One of those employees was a charity worker who had planned to go to Africa to help build a mission-school with her own money and the trip had to be cancelled. One of the children who might have been saved became a child soldier instead and became involved in several wars causing directly/indirectly the deaths of thousands of innocents. This has become an international disaster and I blame both your daughter in law and you.
and Threaded.

[AtW]

The company was going through a cash-flow crisis and that measly amount made the difference and the company went into administration.

If £500 made such a difference then it was a matter of time for this company to go under - it is strange that employees did not put together 500 quid to keep company afloat.

[Churchill]

A few years ago I worked for medium sized company, they too had made a similar error of about £500, the recipient refused to cooperate.
The company was going through a cash-flow crisis and that measly amount made the difference and the company went into administration.
The employees lost their jobs, pensions and futures, it was a disaster for all concerned.
One of those employees was a charity worker who had planned to go to Africa to help build a mission-school with her own money and the trip had to be cancelled. One of the children who might have been saved became a child soldier instead and became involved in several wars causing directly/indirectly the deaths of thousands of innocents. This has become an international disaster and I blame both your daughter in law and you.
and Threaded.

The above quotation definitely has a bovine quality to it.

Too subtle for AtW, mefinks!

[EternalOptimist]

If £500 made such a difference then it was a matter of time for this company to go under - it is strange that employees did not put together 500 quid to keep company afloat.

AtW ---my friend

please tell me that you did not take it seriously

[AtW]

That will teach me to read messages posted on here from start to end...

I'll get me coat...

[Churchill]

That will teach me to read messages posted on here from start to end...

I'll get me coat...

Oh, you tease!

[shoes]

She has since married my son (and changed her name) and moved addresses. But her bank sort code and account number remain the same.

She has today received a letter (sent to her previous address in her maiden name) from the Managing Director of the company that employed her for 6 months about 2 years ago saying they are sorry but due to a computer error, they have paid £xxx into her account.

I'd be tempted to chuck the letter in the bin and claim you'd never recieved it, depending on the amount. Her name is different and her address is different, it was quite bad luck for the letter to be forwarded on to her from her old address. They don't know her name, where she lives, or even if that is still her bank account. I expect they have written it off anyway and are not really expecting to hear back. If its a fairly small sum you may as well keep it. If they make enough effort to track her down to her current address I'd give it back, but I don't think I'd do it before then. People may suggest this is immoral, but I suspect she did enough unpaid overtime to cover it!

[BoredBloke]

I had a similar one to this a while ago when an agency I used to work for paid me £14k by mistake. I got them to write me a letter to say what they had done and confirming that I had to give it back. I then became a little hard to contact while their cash spent a while resting in my high interest account. Then I paid them back.

Would it really be worth the hassle to run the risk of a adverse credit rating for a couple of hundred pounds. If it is a case that she can't afford to pay it back, thn she could easily arrnage payment terms with the company

[miss marple]

Thank you all for you invaluable advice and in response:

I thought detectives were on the right side of the law.

Denny, detectives are on the right side of the law but they need to eliminate the improbable and then weigh up ALL the probabilities and evidence before they reach their infallible conclusion.

Yes she is. The owner of this loot dumped it on her doorstep!

Thank you for your defence there Wendigo – curiously enough, that beach all the scum went last week is only a few miles down the road from me…. We wondered what the traffic jams were about at the time but decided not to join in....

Respond saying that she already had money in the account, and new (their) money got mixed together, so she does not know which ones are theirs and which ones hers. Naturally they can't expect to have her pay her own money by mistake only because they made their own mistake.

I bow to your superiority in lateral thinking AtW – I am truly impressed. BTW, your SKA has crawled my website 4 times this month – should I be honoured?

EternalOptimist, I am sobbing all over my keyboard as I read your post and am tempted to ask my daughter in law to return the money plus an equivalent amount in donation to help atone for causing this international disaster ~sniffle~

I'd be tempted to chuck the letter in the bin and claim you'd never recieved it, depending on the amount. Her name is different and her address is different, it was quite bad luck for the letter to be forwarded on to her from her old address. ~snip~

.

Trouble is, Shoes, her parents and sister still live at that previous address…

~snip~ If it is a case that she can't afford to pay it back, thn she could easily arrnage payment terms with the company

.

She can afford to pay it back, (and it's ARRANGE BTW) she ain’t spent it.

What I was really after was any thoughts on the option of deducting, say, £15.00 for the inconvience (like that bank always does every time they send you a letter) and the other aspect which is that they still appear to have her bank account details ‘live’ some 18 months after she left?