[jdsully]

From the article:

The second problem is, they have to get all that money back. If a federal employee is accidentally overpaid, the government can only recoup 16.67% of the amount of the overpayment per paycheck pay period. You can’t take it all back at once. So then they had to write a special payroll job to pull all this money back. It took ‘em like four or five months to get it all, but finally it was all accounted for.

[omarfarooq]

I read that part, the language of the article makes it seem like they had to actively debit everyone that was overpaid to get the money back. Underpaying them on the next pay period wouldn't require any debits to the bank accounts where the money ended up ("take it all back"). Article doesn't have really have specifics to the solution. Rather what I mean is it's not clear what "take it all back" means: is that referring to direct debits to where the money ended up in, or is that referring to adjusting what goes out in the next pay periods?

[d1sxeyes]

I don't think even the USPS can order your bank to transfer money to them, you would have to order it. As a result, I guess that the 'take it all back' refers to adjusting pay.

[sokoloff]

I'm pretty sure that the agreement I signed to enable direct deposit allowed for errors and overpayments to be removed from my account.

[etrevino]

This was 20 years ago and a lot of people were paid by check. So the only way to reclaim the money from them was to underpay folks. They probably just handled it that way for everyone.

Even now, at my Federal government job when someone is overpaid we issue them a "debt letter" and then reduce their pay until the account is balanced. I assume it's because of the same reg/statute that fixes the clawback to 16.7%.

[d1sxeyes]

I can't speak to what specifically you signed, but there is a process guide available here: https://about.usps.com/manuals/elm/html/elmc4_027.htm

It suggests that even if technically and/or legally the option exists to recover the money directly from you, it's not part of the procedures that govern this type of thing (...as of today. It may have been in the past. Indeed, these procedures may well have been drawn up pursuant to the event discussed in TFA).