Commission - The chance has long gone but....
Discussion
This is following on from the debt thread, as this is probably what started my descent into trouble. If any of the legal bods on here can supply an answer I would be interested to know. (Not now that it would do any good.)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (1995) & before all the pro-employee legislation and HR departments, I used to work for a retail outlet as a manager. This retail outlet was owned by an importer who supplied about 60% of the goods we sold.
One Christmas the importer/owner of the outlet called all the managers together and announced,
"Good news everyone!! We putting you all on commission! How it will work will be like this. Its not the amount of our goods that you sell, its the amount of our goods you order into stock". Which of course sounded a bit weird at the time but being young and naive I just accepted it. The companies financial director whose brainwave it was actually said to me,
"If you were going on holiday, the month before you'd order a bit more stock to give you a bit of extra cash,"
To this day, those words haunt be as I think that if I'd had a witness things might have turned out differently. After this meeting he gave us a one page letter, which both signed, outlining the new scheme.
Roll on one year and we have a usual stocktake, no harm done and we just had our busiest year ever, so everyone was very pleased and I had ordered my stock accordingly. A couple of weeks pass and I'm told.
"Your shops over stocked, can you bundle up some of it and send it back to us,"
"Ok"
"We'll be issuing credit notes and therefore your commission will be reduced,"
"But hang on, thats not mentioned in the letter. That just states it will be paid on goods ordered not on goods sold, it doesn't mention anything about credit notes and commission being claimed back."
"Well that's tough,"
"So basically it wasn't commission it was a loan that you could claim back at anytime?
"No comment"
So when I quit (& the same financial director tellingly asked me if it was over the payment scheme.) & after I had copied a load of documents that would be useful, I waited a few weeks and told them that I was taking them to court. Unfortunetly my then girlfriend who was studing law said I had a case and not to waste money on a proper court but to take it to Small Claims. Despite having the original letter, copies of invoices and credit notes and other related documents, I lost the first round and then decided not to take it any further as basically the magistrate (I think) who was ruling on the case said I would have to produce much more evidence which I now couldn't get.
The case didn't cost me much but the credit notes did.... £3500 which in 1995 was a lot of money (still is.)
I'm not looking to justify why my current finances are in such a mess but I'm just curious and wanted to ask the PH legal bods; If I had taken them with more evidence to a proper court or if it happened today, would the result have been any different?
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (1995) & before all the pro-employee legislation and HR departments, I used to work for a retail outlet as a manager. This retail outlet was owned by an importer who supplied about 60% of the goods we sold.
One Christmas the importer/owner of the outlet called all the managers together and announced,
"Good news everyone!! We putting you all on commission! How it will work will be like this. Its not the amount of our goods that you sell, its the amount of our goods you order into stock". Which of course sounded a bit weird at the time but being young and naive I just accepted it. The companies financial director whose brainwave it was actually said to me,
"If you were going on holiday, the month before you'd order a bit more stock to give you a bit of extra cash,"
To this day, those words haunt be as I think that if I'd had a witness things might have turned out differently. After this meeting he gave us a one page letter, which both signed, outlining the new scheme.
Roll on one year and we have a usual stocktake, no harm done and we just had our busiest year ever, so everyone was very pleased and I had ordered my stock accordingly. A couple of weeks pass and I'm told.
"Your shops over stocked, can you bundle up some of it and send it back to us,"
"Ok"
"We'll be issuing credit notes and therefore your commission will be reduced,"
"But hang on, thats not mentioned in the letter. That just states it will be paid on goods ordered not on goods sold, it doesn't mention anything about credit notes and commission being claimed back."
"Well that's tough,"
"So basically it wasn't commission it was a loan that you could claim back at anytime?
"No comment"
So when I quit (& the same financial director tellingly asked me if it was over the payment scheme.) & after I had copied a load of documents that would be useful, I waited a few weeks and told them that I was taking them to court. Unfortunetly my then girlfriend who was studing law said I had a case and not to waste money on a proper court but to take it to Small Claims. Despite having the original letter, copies of invoices and credit notes and other related documents, I lost the first round and then decided not to take it any further as basically the magistrate (I think) who was ruling on the case said I would have to produce much more evidence which I now couldn't get.
The case didn't cost me much but the credit notes did.... £3500 which in 1995 was a lot of money (still is.)
I'm not looking to justify why my current finances are in such a mess but I'm just curious and wanted to ask the PH legal bods; If I had taken them with more evidence to a proper court or if it happened today, would the result have been any different?
I think you would have ended up winning, but only after a long, expensive and all consuming campaign. Might also have left you unemployable or marked as trouble.
On the other hand, the company may have agreed to settle out of court to avoid the publicity. if you'd got serious, or hired an employement lawyer
It does sound a spectacularly ill thought out scheme......
and long ago...
Yeah, that's what I thought but back in the Stone Age we weren't as clued up as we are now.
Heigh Ho.....
oh and I forgot to mention. I found out later that two months after I abandoned my case, the payment scheme was scrapped and they returned to normal salaries. Funny that.
Heigh Ho.....
oh and I forgot to mention. I found out later that two months after I abandoned my case, the payment scheme was scrapped and they returned to normal salaries. Funny that.
Edited by The Hypno-Toad on Thursday 20th January 11:13
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