Tesco has overpaid and underpaid hundreds of staff who were recently let go in the latest round of redundancies at the supermarket.
Chief executive Dave Lewis apologised for the distress caused and said that, as soon as the problems were identified, letters were sent to try to fix it.
Between 200 and 300 former workers were affected, the Press Association understands, with some overpaid by as much as £2,000.
READ MORE: Scottish hotel group Macdonald in blockbuster sale deal
Tesco is now attempting to claw back the overpayments and pay the correct amounts to those who received too little.
Anyone who was overpaid by more than £500 will be able to keep £100. But anyone overpaid by less than £500 will be allowed to keep the full amount.
This creates small quirks that mean anyone overpaid by £499 will be able to keep the full amount, but anyone overpaid by £500 will have to return £400.
A Tesco spokesman said: “A small number of colleagues were impacted by an administrative error which resulted in an incorrect redundancy payment being made to them.
“Colleagues who were underpaid were paid the correct amount within one to two working days and this issue is now resolved.
READ MORE: Football firm calls in advisers | Tesco trials delivery robot | Inflation expected to cool off
“We have been in touch with colleagues who were overpaid to apologise, and we will be fair to colleagues affected, taking account of individual circumstances.”
The former employees were part of a major redundancy programme announced earlier this year which is expected to affect 9,000 full-time equivalent positions – although a total number has not been announced.
This includes plans to close or reduce deli counters across stores, and end catering for staff in stores. Head office jobs are also expected to go.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article