Urgent help - very worried

Becles

Just an update:

Hubby spoke to a supervisor today. She said although the claim ended in April 04, the computer has been billing him weekly every since which is why the arrears have built up so much.

She is going to put a stop on the claim, and work it all out and let us know the outcome as soon as possible.

The strongly worded letter that arrived out of the blue last week was a notice that a debt enforcement agency will be in touch. However, she has put notes on the account that this must not be followed up until she has completed her investigation.

We feel more hopeful now.

Becles

Another update:

The supervisor can't get the computer to stop billing him or close the account. It's been referred to IT support to get the account closed down properly.

Nobody understands the figures, so once the account is closed, they are going to have to sit down and work out what he should have paid, and then what he has paid and make arrangements from there. He is getting a copy of the figures in the post to make sure he agrees with them.

He's worked out if the letter saying his arrears were cleared on 03/03/06, but the case was closed on 15/04/04, that he's probably overpaid and they owe him some money back.

He made a complaint about the rude man. They are listening to the telephone call and will take appropriate action after listening to it.

aMeLia'S~MuMMY

Glad that some action is going to be taken over the rude member of staff, the computer is notorious to carry on charging once closed as I pointed out in my previous post ~ this member of staff should have checked this out first when you reported that your arrears had been cleared.

Anyway i do not think that there is a quick fix to the problem ~ it just usually gets logged as I do not think EDS (computer people) have a fix for this.

hopefully when you have your account breakdown has been done the issue will be fully resolved. The sad thing is it is quite common and it was something that was not thought of in the build of the computer system.

Good luck ~it just shows it is worth querying and you didn't just pay up.

:A

Becles

Back to square one.

A telephone call today and we were told that all the figures in the previous letters were errors.

They have calculated that he owes £1700 and want paying as soon as possible. They could not explain how they arrived at this figure and we haven't got access to £1700 to pay it.

Have asked for all the details of the account to be posted out as soon as possible and have booked an appointment with a solicitor next week.

NAR

Quite correct that a Civil Servant gets investigated and dealt with if he was rude with a "customer." Front line calls are recorded and it should be easy to prove or disprove.
Just cos his daughter has gone abroad why should your husband not support her? I thought I read on other threads that CSA was still payable in these circumstances - perhaps kelloggs can clarify? Maybe thats how these arrears come about?

Becles

We were told by the CSA that he only had to pay if she was resident in the UK, so the claim ended when she left the UK. The mother was already a single mother on benefits when he met her, which is why the CSA got involved after the baby was born.

The mother cut all contact when she found she was pregnant, and he's never been allowed to see the child. We have no idea where she is other than "abroad". He's not on her birth certificate so chances are the child will never even know he is her father.

The three children living with us are our top priority. If he does owe money, he is willing to pay it back in installments, but we're not willing to take out a loan to cover it. I don't think that is unreasonable considering we're currently on a low income, as I'm not working and claiming maternity benefits.

aMeLia'S~MuMMY

The arrears that are due are probably down to being due to the SOS when his ex partner was on benefits as usually if she is out of jurisdiction for child support any arrears owing to her are suspended.

You definately need the account breakdown in writing, I am quite surprised that it has been done so quicky as the paperwork usually has to be ordered in order for this to be done which usually takes a couple of days (at the least!!) then there is also usually a waiting list for the breakdowns too.

It might be worth asking for a face to face visit with a CSA officer to go through everything and I am afraid usually solicitors do not do any good in dealing with the CSA your MP would be a better bet.

You should be able to pay this money back in insatallments but the current steer is to have them cleared within 2 years when negotiating so bear this in mind, however firstly I would check to make sure you do definately owe those arrars as they have made a mistake with you before.

:A

Becles

Just an update:

The paperwork didn't arrive in time for us to see the solicitor, so we had to cancel the appointment.

We now have the account breakdown, but there are a number of problems with it. According to their records, he made no payments between 1998-2003

He was paying cash at the PO using CSA supplied paying in slips during this period, and we are assuming the payments have been going astray somewhere. I've no idea how we can prove he paid, as he's no longer got any records of the payments he made.

When he spoke last week, they were adament he owed £1750 and again threatened to pass it onto a debt collection agency if he didn't pay up immediately.

They have demanded payment again today and threatened the debt collection agency again. Hubby phoned at lunchtime and spoke to a decent man and told him we are willing to pay £10 a week until the matter is resolved and he seemed happy with that. He did comment that the account is an absolute mess and the £1750 might not even be correct.

I also went to the CAB today, but they were too busy to see me. A lady took brief details and made me an appointment for Tuesday morning.

The CSA are a horrible bunch of people to deal with, and I'm glad my ex and me managed to work out voluntary payments for the two boys.

aMeLia'S~MuMMY

I do not think that he can now prove that he was paying for that period as the transcash stub is needed to check. I would have thought that if he made no payments in this period that he should have been contacted earlier with regards to this.
kelloggs is back of her holidays now so possibly be along later and may be able to offer some further advice.

It might be worth contacting your local MP with regards to this as they are more use than a solicitor in theses matters, especially as the gentleman you spoke to today still was not conviced that the figure given was correct.

Becles wrote: »

The CSA are a horrible bunch of people to deal with, and I'm glad my ex and me managed to work out voluntary payments for the two boys.

It is not neccesarily the CSA staff that are a horrible bunch of people, i know that you have had a bad experience with one but the resources we have to do our job ( completely useless pile of cr*p called a computer system) hinders us all day every day.

:A

Becles

Apart from the man today, everyone has demanded immediate payment of various 4 figure sums. I'd love to know where they think we can magic such sums of money from

All of this is down to the CSA's mistakes. Hubby has always paid what he has been told to pay and had no reason to think he was paying the wrong amounts or that payments were not being credited to his account.

However because the CSA have made mistakes which they cannot explain, we get threatened with debt collection agencies if we don't do as they say. It's really not fair putting us under all this stess and worry, when it's their fault the problems have occurred.