Childcare vouchers - mistaken payments - should we confess?

[blondegirl73]

My husband left his old job on April 29th and started his new one on May 11th. So his last salary from his old company was paid on April 25th.

We have just discovered that for some reason, his old company have continued to pay £243 childcare vouchers into his Sodexo account, which have then gone straight out to our childminder (we had a standing order set up). So she’s been paid £243 extra for May, June and now July.

I’ve now stopped that standing order from Sodexo to the childminder but she’s got that extra money. I’m assuming until we tell his old company otherwise, they’ll carry on paying £243 into that Sodexo account but we won’t use it obviously – he can’t even access that account now because he doesn’t know his password and it’s linked with his old email address that doesn’t exist any more.

My question to you lovely people is should we fess up to his old company and risk them asking us to pay back those payments? We’d have to ask the childminder to pay them back to us, and then pay them back to his company I guess. Or can we keep the money and get our childminder to knock it off our most recent bill?

My husband is being spectacularly unhelpful about the whole thing and is refusing to do anything at all about it. He says it's nothing to do with us (I sort of see his point - the money has never been in our possession - it went from his old company to Sodexo to our childminder - but the fact is, the account's in his name), and it's up to our childminder to pay it back if she wants to. I asked him to phone his old HR department and he won't.

My fear is our childminder will be unable to pay it back (Sodexo won't even discuss it with her because it's not her account), and later on down the line we'll be liable for that money.

What would you do?

So has your childminder been paid twice for the same work or has she been paid just once for work she didn't do - is she still looking after your child? If she is then getting the money off her is spectacularly easy - just deduct the overpayment from current and future bills until she has received the correct amount. Then give the money back to the company. It was their error but it would be wrong to profit from it.

I don't think your childminder should pay them back - if she did, you'd have to pay her the difference anyway, so you'd be in the same position. You need to pay the amount back directly to previous employer.

She's still looking after our kids. She's been paid an extra £243 per month, for three months - we didn't know anything about it until yesterday.

I am so annoyed that the company have made this mistake, caused us lots of stress, and it's all going to be a hassle to sort out. AND that my husband is refusing to sort it out or even accept that it's his problem to sort. Seriously, how hard is it to stop someone's childcare vouchers when they leave a job?

Ah, I didn't realise she'd been paid extra, so ignore my last message. You'd have thought she'd have realised that she had been paid that? What a mess - good luck sorting it out.

It is their fault really, not yours. It's their mistake that they have to correct. I wouldn't say anything.
If you did, it would be unreasonable of them to ask the child minder to pay it back as its their mistake.

We sorted it out - husband emailed HR at his old company and they said it does need to be paid back. Our childminder has credited us with the overpayments so now it's just us who needs to pay the company. They haven't told us how to do it so we're hanging on to the money for now! They'd told Sodexo that husband was leaving in April 2016 instead of April 2015.

That's alright then