A little legal question

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Edgar

I'm posting this semi anonymously. Deal with it.

First off, I know outsourcing legal advice isn't a good idea, I'm just exploring my options right now.

I work I'm sales for a small company that acts as a retailer for a much, much larger company. A customer of mine recently bounced a check with us, and my employer is withholding the amount (nearly $400) from my commissions until the customer pays it. I didn't earn any commission on the transaction, and the money is being deducted from the commissions I earned last month.

Is this even legal? I didn't think an employer could deduct from your pay for a bounced check a customer wrote. I would think they would seek action against the writer of the check, not me.
 
Gared

Gared

It's certainly a dick move, but I'm not sure of the legalities of the matter. Commission pay can screw you six ways from Sunday, same as bonus pay, because it's not guaranteed pay like your salary or hourly wages. Is this in the US, or abroad?
 
Gared

Gared

The first place I'd start is with your state's government website. They should have a section regarding pay policies. It will also depend on the size of the company that you work for, as a lot of policies change depending on the number of employees.
 
Gared

Gared

Not a bad assumption, really. But no, I don't work on commission, I'm hourly. And I don't work in sales, I ship dead peoples' account data to their next of kin.
 
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Edgar

You realize that trying to guess my thinly veiled identity rather defeats the purpose of posting anonymously, right?

I've done some checking for my state's laws on pay, and so far I've found that if you work on a commission, you're pretty much at the mercy of your employer to pay you, because the law doesn't give a shit.

On the plus side, I was able to contact the customer in question, and thanks to my good working relationship with them, they were more than happy to pay for the bounced check, so I'm no longer going to be docked. The fact that they -can- withhold my pay due to something a customer does doesn't sit very well with me. I think I'll be combing over our company policy to see if there's anything I can do from within to protect myself.
 
Frank

Frank

That kind of shit always bugs me. Like when a bar will hold the wait staff responsible if a customer ducks out on a bill.
 
checkeredhat

checkeredhat

Honestly it kind of sucks but I can't really imagine why it'd be illegal, and it actually makes good sense for the business particularly when you work on commission. I mean, theoretically, you could go to a bunch of friends, "sell" each of them a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff (Or one GIANT purchase to one friend, to be less obvious), tell them to cancel the cheques immediately and get your commission for a massive scam. I worked door to door doing labour a few summers ago and that was commission where we were paid in cash at the end of each day, before cheques and credit cards could possibly have been processed. I'm sure there were a number of guys there doing that (If they weren't just doing the sales off the record and pocketing 100%, which many of them were.)

Come to think of it I get why that company ripped off their customers so much, 90% of their employs were ripping THEM off, so there was a lot of overhead.
 
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Edgar

checkeredhat said:
Honestly it kind of sucks but I can't really imagine why it'd be illegal, and it actually makes good sense for the business particularly when you work on commission. I mean, theoretically, you could go to a bunch of friends, "sell" each of them a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff (Or one GIANT purchase to one friend, to be less obvious), tell them to cancel the cheques immediately and get your commission for a massive scam. I worked door to door doing labour a few summers ago and that was commission where we were paid in cash at the end of each day, before cheques and credit cards could possibly have been processed. I'm sure there were a number of guys there doing that (If they weren't just doing the sales off the record and pocketing 100%, which many of them were.)

Come to think of it I get why that company ripped off their customers so much, 90% of their employs were ripping THEM off, so there was a lot of overhead.
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In this case, the payment taken was a payment for extended service, not a sale of goods. No commission was involved in this transaction, I would have made nothing off of it.
 
checkeredhat

checkeredhat

Edgar said:
In this case, the payment taken was a payment for extended service, not a sale of goods. No commission was involved in this transaction, I would have made nothing off of it.
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Ah, I misunderstood. So they're withholding pay from a previous commission.
I just reread the OP, not sure how I didn't gather that the first time as you made that pretty clear. I'll blame my lack of sleep this week.
But yeah, that does seem like it shouldn't be legal then.
 
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