Job Discussion Forums

elliewelliesj · Joined: 06 Jan 2006 Posts: 65

just wanted to ask the advice of any of you old hands who seem to know the deal and laws much better than me! My school pays me and my boyfriend a montly salary, from which our rent is deducted.
The last 2 months they forgot to deduct it. But we didnt notice, we get travel pay and so the total amount always changes a bit.
Anyhow, now they have realised their error but want it back. I do understand and I am really not trying to dodge the rent - but all the past few month's money we have spent or sent home to pay off debts. So we dont have any to spare - so am a bit worried that we might be stuck in the next few months.
Does anyone know what we can do? It was their error.... but dont want to get into a big fuss either!
Thank you so much for your advice.

azarashi sushi · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Posts: 562 Location: Shinjuku

Yawarakaijin · Joined: 20 Jan 2006 Posts: 504 Location: Middle of Nagano

If you have enough time on your contract aske them to balance it out over the year. Explain you sent all the money home and that you really cant afford to take a big hit all at once. I'm sure they would understand.

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

I agree with the above (including the astonishment that your salary varies by such a huge amount).

Explain the situation, apologize for not noticing it (YES, YOU apologize. You are partly at fault here.) Then work out an arrangement. Either take it out in further increments from future paychecks, or find the money somehow and pay it back. I suspect they'll go for the former.

elliewelliesj · Joined: 06 Jan 2006 Posts: 65

Yes I guess you are right...the reason it isnt such a dramatic difference is the fact that the rent is split between us so 2 paychecks..... plus different bills go out from our checks too, and they have been higher than they should be,(double in fact but the office is sorting that out) so it all kind of balanced out.... in effect we paid the rent via extra bills!
But thanks for the advice, i hope we can arrange to pay it back in small amounts over time. We are here for a while yet, so fingers crossed it will all be ok. I was worried that they might suddenly ask for it all back in one go and leave us stuck.
But thanks for the comments, just wanted to run it by more experienced people.

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

JimDunlop2 · Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Posts: 2286 Location: Japan

Well, I can sorta relate... A similar thing happened to us when we changed banks and the landlady informed us she hadn't received our rent for two months running because of a furikomi error. We didn't notice either -- mainly because we constantly had other large sums of money going both in and out of the account and we were not using an effective budgeting system. After that we started using a new budgeting system so that this kind of mistake couldn't happen... And it has been alright since then.

In any case, to solve our problem, we just proposed to the landlady that we pay our regular rent on time, but on top of that, pay an extra half-month's rent... So that way she'd get her back rent within 4 months. No problem. She was totally cool with that and everything was resolved.

elliewelliesj · Joined: 06 Jan 2006 Posts: 65

Yes we are now being extra good on our money! plus it was our first few months pay checks -we are newbies so just hadnt really thought things through! or what to expect... anyway it looks like we are going to be able to pay it over a few months. Thanks

craven · Joined: 17 Dec 2004 Posts: 130

I had a similar situation with the direct debit for my parking space...because it was a smaller amount (about Y5000/month), I didn't notice that it wasn't coming out, and my fudosan were too nervous to say anything...for almost a year!! Needless to say, I didn't want to take a Y55000 hit all at once, so I talked to them and worked out a payment schedule. Folks are usually pretty nice about that, as long as you're up front with them.