anyone know how long this might take.....

lisssa

Hi

Hope someone can help me. I checked my bank account today and realised my Tax Credit hadnt gone into my bank account yesterday. For info, my daughter is 16 and as requested by the Renewal Forms , I advised them months ago that she was staying on at 6th Form and therefore my credits would continue for another 2 years.
I have rang the tax credit office this morning, and after waiting 35 minutes finally got to speak to an adviser. He told me that yes that have it on record that she is staying on at 6th form, however these types of renewals only start to get input on the 1st Sept and mine obviously hasnt been updated yet.
He could not tell me how long I have to wait until my credits restart , he just kept repeating ' it will be input as soon as possible and he could not give me any indication of how long I might have to wait'
He stated this is the same approach they take every year, and basically its just tough .

Personally I think its ridiculous, I advised them months ago, did what was asked, and yet now im left in limbo, not knowing when it might restart. I rely on that money on a weekly basis, and it wont help me when it does restart that all they will do is really calculate the weekly amt to a slighly higher figure, rather than pay out an initial lump sum of the number of weeks I will have missed!!

Soo does anyone have any idea how long this might take to resolve, and is there any other action I can take to speed this up? Whilst I didnt raise my voice or get angry , I ended up putting the phone down on him because he just couldnt / wouldnt give me an answer that would help me - how are you supposed to replan your finances when you have no idea how long you need to replan for !!

ANy help / suggestions gratefully received !!

Thanks

krisskross

Things could have changed since your daughter became old enough to leave school. She could have decided to leave, get married, who knows?

TBH I don't see how else the tax credits can be administered. If they just carried on paying people could have an overpayment.

veryfedupmum

Hi, the same thing happened to me today, my benefit dropped by nearly half today, as my son started college this week. I told them about it in July and reminded them again last week. I'm afraid I don't know how long it will take, but three years ago when my daughter turned 16, there was no delay at all, the money was in the bank on the day I expected it to be. I phoned them first thing and couldn't get through as it was too busy, and when I phoned again at lunchtime, they had put a new recorded message at the start of their usual one, saying "if you are calling because you have advised us that your child is staying on at school, please note your benefit will be reassessed from 1st September.....". The fact that they have put this on their recorded message during the morning makes me think that they have done this to everyone, and have had lots of calls!
I guess it's just a matter of wait and see when it turns up (and hope my landlord doesn't moan too much when the rent is late!).

joanne_d_3

Hi.

There seems to be an awful lot of people who have had the nasty surprise of reduced / stopped tax credit payments this week , i myself am one of them.

My daughter has also just left school and i too informed tax credits way back in June / July time that she was intending to stay on in education / training course .

Yet when i rung the tc office on wednesday just to make SURE they had noted the change , they advised me that my payments would be recalculated from the 1st September . I then asked them to tell me how much my payment was going to be for yesterday and the lady told me the payment was going to be HALF of what it usually is . The reason for the dramatic change is that my daughter for whom my payments had been suspended also receives the disability premium so unfortuantely i am without both this week.

I too asked how long the system will take to update the award to show my daughter as a dependent again and the lady at tc office was unable to tell me.

I am frustrated because i had been led to believe that there would be no disruption to payments.....

Hopefully we wont be kept waiting too long.

Can we all post back on this thread when our payments return to normal so that we can keep track of how long it has taken .

storm35

Same happened to me today, i have tried ringing them all day, could not get through, so i have no idea when i will get my TC we need that as we work week to week basis, petrol to get to work etc,

alwaysonthego_2

GOING OFF-TOPIC


Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: While it’s easy to wander off-topic that often prevents newbies finding the information they want quickly and easily (please see this rule). Please keep this thread on topic. If you’d like to discuss non-MoneySaving related topics please continue your discussion in The MoneySavers Arms or Discussion Time. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="%20abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

joanne_d_3

Alwaysonthego - can i just point something out to you ?

I see you have removed my last post , a post in which i replied to viktory that if she had no experience of the situation which is involved in the original post (delayed tc payments because of a child leaving school) then maybe this thread wasnt the best place for her to be posting - ie , how can you offer advice on a situation of which you have no experience ?

Now...just as you did a few days ago , you have removed my post and let hers remain....now as you can see from the post above where she made a very childish remark , it is she who is flaming the situation by posting these childish remarks !

Is it a case of viktory being a "longer member" or what ?

Or can i expect to see her pointless posts in the thread being removed too?

Just after an explanation , thats all , wouldnt want a board guide to be seen as being "discriminatory" towards members......

alwaysonthego_2

joanne_d wrote: »

Alwaysonthego - can i just point something out to you ?

I see you have removed my last post , a post in which i replied to viktory that if she had no experience of the situation which is involved in the original post (delayed tc payments because of a child leaving school) then maybe this thread wasnt the best place for her to be posting - ie , how can you offer advice on a situation of which you have no experience ?

Now...just as you did a few days ago , you have removed my post and let hers remain....now as you can see from the post above where she made a very childish remark , it is she who is flaming the situation by posting these childish remarks !

Is it a case of viktory being a "longer member" or what ?

Or can i expect to see her pointless posts in the thread being removed too?

Just after an explanation , thats all , wouldnt want a board guide to be seen as being "discriminatory" towards members......

Please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL] if you would like to report my actions.

You can also ask them to look at the posts as my role is not to deal with abuse, it is not my responsibilty to decide what other posters would find abusive or not, I just removed the more argumentative posts and referred them to abuse.

I would like to point out to you to read the forum rules http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/site/forum-faqs

Also I have never had experienced on most benefit problems that I have advised on.

fluffysteph

hi...just to let you know I am in the same boat...I rang them this morning and they said they have no idea when it will be sorted out. I asked for a rough timeline i.e days or weeks and they said they had no idea, but it will be backdated. Apparently this will make us feel better...meanwhile direct debits are flying out with nothing coming in. They did say in the case of hardship, we can go to the nearest branch of tax credits enquries and request a payment, which I believe is £50. Hope everyone's is sorted out soon xx

justmel

Hi,
i posted on Wednesday with the same question,i am in exactly the same position and they told me there was no timeline and they didn't know how long it would take.

I did ring them back because as they had said to me that this does happen every year with the 16 year olds i was hoping they could at least give me a rough idea,the guy on the phone did say 'hopefully a few days' but seeing as it is treated as a renewal i think it will be a bit longer,past renewals have taken about a week.

I am hoping it wont be any longer than that,i do understand they need a system and i do understand that it's not the fault of the advisor but this was all new to me and when i first called with the details of my son's course i told them i was new to it all and the lady i spoke to said my payments would just carry on which obviously is not how it works at all.

I just wish they had explained things a bit better because of course i understand the sense in why they do it like this but it was a huge shock to be £50 down this week,the same week my son enrolled and i had to pay the £60 enrollment fee for his course,had i known about this before i could have prepared for it.

looby75

The exact same thing happened to me last year when my daughter started sixth form, it took about 3 weeks to sort out presuming they use the same system etc I would have thought it would take about the same length of time this year too.

HTH