I am a self-employed (Limited Company) truck driver and was recently employed by a company that at the start of my employment asked me to sign the following form whereby I agreed to pay for any damage to a vehicle in my care. The wording of the form is as follows:
Dear…… (Company Name) reserve the right to make deductions fairly from your Invoice for the following: A charge for damages, while the vehicle is in your care. ie. damage to a company vehicle or any other vehicle caused by your neglect. This may be the full cost of the repair or the insurance excess of £500 dependant on the cause/damage. Could you please sign and print below to confirm you agree to the above terms and conditions.
I had a small bump in a third party’s yard and made contact with a crash barrier on the nearside whilst reversing on to a bay. It was pouring with rain and visibility was poor although the yard was sufficiently lit. I damaged the passenger side stairwell to the vehicle. The stairwell was still usable but it was badly cracked and in fairness needed replacing. The company obtained an estimate for the repair which totalled £770 for parts (I was not being charged for the labour costs) and was told there would be a deduction from my pay to cover this.
Following the bump I was advised that the company leased all its vehicles and so any damage needed to be replaced with new parts.
I left the company rather than risk future liability on any future bumps etc.
A few weeks have past since leaving the company and when comparing my invoices against pay received there is a shortfall of over £1200.00.
The company have not contacted me since leaving and I am about to contact them regarding the shortfall in pay.
I was mindful of the form I was signing at the time I signed it but I reasonably assumed that if I didn’t I would not be employed by the company. I also thought that perhaps it might have been just a ploy to encourage me to be careful.
Advice requested please
I would appreciate advice on this matter and my initial thoughts are as follows:
Should all other employees of the company have been similarly asked to sign the same form? If not does this affect whether the form has legal standing?
The damage I caused was not wilful neglect but an accident albeit that I was at fault.
The first line of the form states ‘…. Right to make deductions fairly from your Invoice….’, and I am wondering what constitutes ‘fairly’ in this instance.
milkmark:
Should all other employees of the company have been similarly asked to sign the same form? If not does this affect whether the form has legal standing?
You wasn’t an employee of the company as you was self employed through your own limited company.
Are the other drivers self employed or directly employed by the company ?
The damage I caused was not wilful neglect but an accident albeit that I was at fault.
If you make contact with a crash barrier it could be argued that you was neglectful, not wilful but neglect nevertheless, and as you say yourself you was at fault.
The first line of the form states ‘…. Right to make deductions fairly from your Invoice….’, and I am wondering what constitutes ‘fairly’ in this instance.
I’m not sure about the legal definition but I would say “fairly” means the legitimate cost of repair but no more.
Sorry mate but you don’t want to be signing forms like that unless you’ve got insurance to cover the costs, and even then I would say it should be the operator or the operators insurance that covers the cost.
I would say the first thing you need to establish is why the cost was £700 and is now £1,200, are they now charging you for fitting the part just because you’ve left the company.
Tell them you’re only prepared to accept the £500 loss of their insurance excess as stated. Any amount higher than that they have to use their insurance.
You were damned the moment you signed the damage waiver tbh. I totally understand the lure of the ££££’s but now you are seeing the flip side of the coin.
When you say you were working as a Ltd Co driver, was that via agency, or were you personally touting your services? If through agency then in future do not sign damage waivers, it’s the agency’s job to cover that. If you are truly self employed I’d suggest in future you take out insurance to cover this type of thing. Of course your rates will reflect this!
Alternatively you can just fold your company and walk away. Ltd Co = limited liability.
The £700 was an estimate of the repair cost they received (parts only).
The company said that I might also be liable if the third party got in touch with them to claim for repairs to damage to the crash barrier. There appeared to be little or no damage to the barrier.
I wasn’t working through an Agency but worked direct for the company as a self employed limited company driver.
Interestingly they were not paying in full all my invoices some time before the bump but of course this could have been an oversight on their part.
Just wanted to be sure of my ground before writing to the company for the outstanding pay.
milkmark:
Interestingly they were not paying in full all my invoices some time before the bump but of course this could have been an oversight on their part.
If they were not paying the the invoice amounts in full was you eventually getting the money and an explanation of why the payments were short ?
Tell them you want an invoice the the damaged truck for the portion of the damage that you have paid they still need to speak to you with regard to any deductions were you work on 30 day terms
I’d take legal advice ,I was a so called 'self employed ’ person ,however the treatment I received from the company, was deemed by a tribunal, to be exactly the same as an employee ,I received the same benefits,I wasn’t allowed to work for other companies,they paid me for holidays etc ,so the lawyers said actually whatever contract your company has, is invalid because you were clearly working as an 'employee and we won the case and they had to pay up ,so don’t ever be intimidated by Ts & Cs ,after all if you read the signs in the car park at any supermarket ,they claim they aren’t liable for any accident or incident on their premise ,thats pure bollix
You should never have signed this at all. Their interpretation of it could be a claim for all your invoices if you wrote the vehicle off.
You gave them the right to take money directly from your invoice, so now all the hassle about sorting it out is yours not theirs.
They cannot charge you for damage to the barrier. They used the abbreviation i.e (“id est”= it is, or more commonly that is) that restricted their claims to vehicles. If they used e.g (“exempli gratia” = for example) the list would not have been exhaustive merely indicative.
They are allowed to charge for ‘the full cost of the repair’, not merely the parts.
If pursued I believe the matter could be resolved by reducing the total to £500, but the contract is practically useless on this point. The amount is dependant on 2 factors; cause and damage. Cause has already been specified in the contract and is limited to ‘your neglect’ (which would need to be established). Damage is undefined and does not even distinguish between the type of damage (e.g. they might charge you for bodywork but not punctures) or the amount of damage (e.g. small bumps are at cost of the repair and major crashes are handled by the insurance). Which party is to decide is also not specified, so arguably the decision is yours not theirs (though there may be a tacit agreement that by giving them ‘the right to make deductions’ you are also assigning them the right to make the decision). You should argue that the obvious inference was the claim would be the smaller of; ‘the full cost of the repair’ or the ‘insurance excess of £500’, otherwise the claim could be without limit (dependent on invoice).
But…
The company obtained an estimate for the repair which totalled £770 for parts (I was not being charged for the labour costs) and was told there would be a deduction from my pay to cover this.
Your post here suggests you knew the cost would exceed the £500 excess and you did not challenge the contract.
The company need to issue you with an itemised VAT invoice for the repair. For accounting purposes there is a difference between not earning the money and earning it and spending it on something (what you spend it on also matters).
Regardless of what else you do, I would contact your local council Trading Standards and try to get them to stop them issuing this contract in future. It’s pretty bogus, they should be invoicing you for any charges (which you could choose to dispute e.g. until negligence is established or the invoice amount is checked). Hopefully the next one will be written by a lawyer not an accountant.
