Tax credits grumpiness

bosseyed

Grrrrrrrr. Had cause to ring the tax credits help line a couple of times yesterday and my god. I've never dealt with such unpleasant people on a helpline before.

As it turned out, I'd made an error on my tax credits renewal form (I got confused by some terminology on the forms because I'm a bit thick - I put the wrong 'cash equivalent value' in for my company car) and managed to inadvertantly skew my salary up to £50k and thus trigger an overpayment debt and get my tax credits stopped.

However I wasn't aware I'd made the error and was just ringing to query where they'd got my income figures from and how they'd calculated the overpayment amount, and it was incredible - I spoke to two Scottish ladies who were both the vilest women I've ever spoken to on a helpline, they were rude, unhelpful, aggressive, incredibly blunt....one of them kept cutting me off and talking over me when all I was trying to gain was an understanding of their process.

I was nice as pie pretty much throughout as I always am when on helplines, especially when I don't understand something and I'm aware that whoever I'm talking to is only there to (supposedly) help; as such I am unfailingly polite at all times but even I had to stop her and query why her attitude was so abysmal and why she was talking to me in such an unprofessional manner.

I did eventually get things sorted (hopefully) but really, it was a complete chore with some not very nice people when really it was a pretty simply query that could have been resolved in a quarter of the time if they'd been more knowledgeable and less keen to make a point.