Legal Assistance with Contribution Issues

Questioner

I've been a union member since 1996, and my payments were always made through my salary. I wasn't aware that this had to be done by direct debit since 2015. I always received a union newsletter, and every year, a neat overview of the union's payment details. I never changed any of my details, but today I received an email from the union stating that payment was likely going through a different person (this person had been paying our dues and had discovered this). An email asking me to contact them. The administration was a mess; my name was linked to the wrong account number, and details like date of birth and occupation were mixed up. The administration representative said, "Oh, something must have gone terribly wrong here." And that's exactly what happened. I called back, and now they want us to pay the 2018-19 dues, around €350 (so we haven't paid since 2015). Our argument was that we should have known it wasn't being deducted from our salary. I disagreed. After being a member for so long, you assume everything is fine. My payslip contains so much information, and my dues hadn't been checked. We believed in good faith that everything was in order. She asked if I had a proposal. I told her I didn't want to pay, and that we'd simply start paying again from now on. So, I'd be compensated. She also admitted she'd made mistakes. In my opinion, we're not to blame. What are my rights/obligations in this matter? I therefore disagreed with their proposal to refund membership fees from 2018 onward. They are now discussing it at a higher level, they are going to find out what went wrong, I will be called back but I want to be well prepared. Thank you in advance for your answer

Questioner

Well, your argument should be that you indeed couldn't have known about the payslip reduction earlier because it's so complex, and that the union's administration or its contractor should have noticed the error sooner. Someone else paid for you; that person deserves a refund. But that's not your problem. Normally, cases like this expire after five years from the time you or the other person became aware of the error, or should have been aware of it (so in that case, the offer is reasonable). The statute of limitations applies again for each period.