I wasn't paid what my salary letter promised, but didn't realize until much later. What now?

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

Two years ago, my boss handed me my first annual salary adjustment letter. It was a substantial increase, retroactive to the beginning of the year.

I filed it away. I noticed a pay bump, but because I also adjusted my 401k and insurance around that time, it wasn't obvious that I wasn't getting the full amount described on the adjustment letter.

Doing my taxes the next year, I noticed my gross income didn't seem to match what I remembered that letter saying. I looked at my paychecks online and found that I was actually being paid $5k lessthan that amount. Unfortunately, I'd misplaced that letter, and started to suspect that I had just misread it. And it was still a decent increase, after all.

My next annual salary adjustment hailed a "raise" of $2k (i.e., less than I originally thought I was making the year before). But again, I couldn't say for sure without last year's letter, and I was embarrassed to think I'd misread that sort of pay increase.

After filing this year's salary adjustment letter, however, I found my original letter from 2017. It really does have that higher salary figure in black and white, and confirmed that number by saying it was "an increase of $XX,XXX." I hadn't misread it after all.

I brought all three salary adjustment letters to HR today and asked what happened. It turns out my manager asked for special permission to give me the larger-than-usual raise. In an email to HR, the CEO approved the smaller raise I actually got, but somehow that change never made it to the letter my manager ultimately signed and handed to me a couple weeks later.

On the surface, it looks like an honest mistake on HR's part. And I should have been more diligent in following up when I noticed the problem, especially now that it's two years (and two salary adjustment letters) past.

Should I mention anything to my manager? Or just let it go?

manpreet 2 years ago

Go to your boss and see if he’ll go to bat for the raise again, assuming all is still going well there.

You’re not owed anything from before - it’s sad that you got a letter saying the wrong amount, but in the end the CEO approves what the CEO approves, and he approved $5k less than what they tried to give you. There’s no circumstance in which they are going to give you back pay or automatically raise your salary based on someone putting the clearly wrong number on a letter.

But you have even more of a track record of doing whatever you’ve been doing, and your boss may be motivated to try again given he thought you got it in the first place.