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Hello, my name is***** am a qualified lawyer and I will be assisting you with your question today. Do you agree that they have paid you twice?
ok but just because you cannot access the payment does not mean they did not pay you twice? Also did your contract state which bank account you were supposed to be paid in?
ok I will answer your queries but remember that technically this is not costing you money. you have an overdraft but that is a debt that you owe to the bank. You were paid by the employer and that has ended up offsetting the debt but overall, you have still been paid by them and that is what a court would look at - that you have actually been paid twice in reality so whilst it may have been used to offset an existing debt, the fact of the matter is that a payment was made. Overall you have not lost any money - you have reduced your debt liabilities but that does not equal losing money
Your bank details will amount to personal information and be subject to data protection rules, which state that they must only keep such data for as long as is reasonably necessary. If you had formally updated your bank details in the past and no longer used the old details then there is no reason for them to have kept them for that long. So that could be a data protection breach, The issue is that you have not technically suffered losses as a result - you were paid the money and whilst the fact it ended up offsetting your overdraft is unfortunate, that is not legally counted as a loss. So as you can only make a claim for breach of data protection if you have suffered actual losses, that will not be an option here. If you can try and contact the bank to try and send that money back to them, it will simply mean your overdraft will increase again so overall you will not be left in any worse off position financially because you may be able to keep the money in the other account, you will have a larger overdraft.
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Yes certainly. I suggest you tell them that whilst you are prepared to pay the money back you can only do so in monthly instalments and advise them that if they were to go to court to pursue this, the court can still order you to pay it in instalments if you can shoe them that a lump sum payment is not possible S it would be better for them to accept your offer, rather than having to go to court, spending time and money and ending up with the same outcome.
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You are welcome, all the best