Company defrauded - All procedures followed - Comission still docked - Minnesota

[ireLocus]

Hi, I'll call myself Bob.

I sell international travel, specializing in humanitarian travel in Africa and Europe. We are a company of 9 employees, if that makes a difference.

Last February we got defrauded, a client used a stolen credit card to purchase tickets, then they acquired refunds at an airport desk in Lome, Togo (right next to Nigeria...). They had an inside man there.

The credit card company has withdrawn the charges, so now our company is responsible to the airlines to 6 tickets, around 5k total in charges. Unfortunately, our company is also small, so we do not have any sort of fraud insurance.

I verified the CC info to the best of my ability, following the suggestions of our Sales Manager since we have no official procedure for such a situation, and I also asked their opinion on the CC info, the tickets and the client. They gave me the go ahead.

Now the Business Manager says my commission must get docked since it was my client and it was fraud. Nowhere in our Procedures Manual is there a policy to this effect, or any policy about fraud at all. This will mean at the end of this quarter I will not get a bonus at all unless I can come up with another 5k in sales in about a week. I'm good, but I'm not that good.



Now they are initiating a policy, though it is still not 'on the books,' and they are going to make it retroactive to my situation.

Also, as it stands, when my next review comes around I will likely be 'let go' because I 'missed my commission goal' even though I really have not. So essentially, this mistake is going to passively cost me my job.



Do I have any legal recourse? I do not think they can hold me responsible for a loss I was not prepared to avoid by their outlined procedures, nor a loss that their advice led me towards. And I certainly don't want to lose my job over a mistake I could not have avoided.




Thanks for your time in reading this and responding.

[ElleMD]

Do you have an actual written commission plan now? If so, have an attorney review it to see if their suggestion is compliant. We can't comment on an agreement we have not read and please do not post it here.

As for holding you responsible because it was your account, that is entirely legal, no matter what they do with your pay. It may be unfair but it isn't against the law to fire you for this.

[ireLocus]

Interesting. So even if I was moving forward per their advice, they can still penalize me? I mean, I don't doubt it, it just stinks that I was the one who wanted to be cautious and I also get to be the one who suffers for the loss.