Pension Credit Hell

Tessmaz

Hi, my dad has made a claim back in January 2012 for pension credits, and an assessor came out and took all his details, evidence of saving etc...and in May 2012 he was awarded his claim and now fortnightly gets paid his awarded amount. They stated he would get a back pay from Jan when he first made his claim! He is still waiting for that back pay amount, hundreds of calls have been made to no avail, mostly the department we go through to are the 'customer service line' who say all they can do is email the right department and that "nothing is on screen" he has wrote a letter with no response, numerous emails have been sent and even a complaint made with the promise it has to be acknowledged within 15 days again NOTHING! How on earth does he get his back pay amount to which he is entitled to...if it was the other way round he would have been in court by now! Please advice how best we should contact them even though every avenue has been exhausted??

sleepless_saver

Time to make a formal complaint - contact them and make it clear that's you want to make a formal complaint. If you don't get anywhere with that, try your MP.

Keep a record of all phone calls, date, who you spoke to, what they said etc so you can use it to back up the complaint.

Whiteknight

Tessmaz wrote: »

Hi, my dad has made a claim back in January 2012 for pension credits, and an assessor came out and took all his details, evidence of saving etc...and in May 2012 he was awarded his claim and now fortnightly gets paid his awarded amount. They stated he would get a back pay from Jan when he first made his claim! He is still waiting for that back pay amount, hundreds of calls have been made to no avail, mostly the department we go through to are the 'customer service line' who say all they can do is email the right department and that "nothing is on screen" he has wrote a letter with no response, numerous emails have been sent and even a complaint made with the promise it has to be acknowledged within 15 days again NOTHING! How on earth does he get his back pay amount to which he is entitled to...if it was the other way round he would have been in court by now! Please advice how best we should contact them even though every avenue has been exhausted??

Gosh it took the Pension Service a long time to get the Pension Credit sorted it must have been a very complex claim if they sent someone out to visit your father to obtain all the required information.

Looking at some of your previous posts I can quite understand why it could have been a long process.

In respect to what your father can do next he could try and find out why the arrears have not been paid - normally an arrears would be paid once the award was assessed. It sounds like the payment was for a large amount which may have caused some issued and could be just sitting waiting for someone to run through and release it or pay it clerically.

What your father needs to do is call and speak to the Pension Centre dealing with the claim, find out why the arrears have not been paid - I would hope that most of the staff would be able to check the system and see that money is owing and should be able to give some explanation as to why it has not been paid. If your father can potentially gift you £50k I am sure he can have a little more patience.

Or you can do what the previous poster suggested.

missapril75

Tessmaz wrote: »

They stated he would get a back pay from Jan when he first made his claim!

mostly the department we go through to are the 'customer service line' who say all they can do is email the right department and that "nothing is on screen"

Several possibilities occur.

One is that this period included a request for information that was delayed. There's been a recent thread where requested information wasn't supplied in time and the claim was closed, then resurrected from later contact. It could be something like that.

Whiteknight wrote: »

Gosh it took the Pension Service a long time to get the Pension Credit sorted it must have been a very complex claim if they sent someone out to visit your father to obtain all the required information.

Whatever those complications were, they could increase the number of times information was requested and thus increase the chance of something not coming back in time.

Perhaps they may also have decided that entitlement begins at a later date for a different reason. Like that reference to gifting money. Perhaps they treated him as still having that money initially and identified a later date where it no longer made a difference. (I have seen cases like that).

As for saying the money would be backdated, If you ask someone "my dad claimed in January and it was finally resolved in May, will he get paid back from January?" then the answer will be yes.

That would be a general answer to a general question. But the specifics of this case may be that they consider it wasn't due from January for the possibilities mentioned.

normally an arrears would be paid once the award was assessed... and could be just sitting waiting for someone to run through and release it or pay it clerically.

Yes, that's often the case. But there ought to be 'prompts' produced because the system knows there's something unfinished. Alternatively someone should at least have noted the payment on the notes screen. (is it still 110/510? )

The "nothing on the screen"......they should be asked if that means the claim has only been recorded from May and that there is nothing about an earlier period or if the system does, in fact, show January as the date of claim.

This is all guess work, but educated guess work based on experience.