DWP Paying me erroniously

TELLIT01

John72Oliver said:

Hi

I've had a response and I intend to write back. I'm wondering if anybody thinks I m being un/reasonnable please?

They have sent me a letter which aknowledges the issue and goes on to say that I should pay money into one of their bank accounts for Pensions and another for Income Support. It then goes on to list the dates and amounts for payments from pensions and another list for payments from Pension Credit. Between the two lists there are five mistakes. Two incorrect dates and three transactions are missing. They also seem to be asking me to pay the pension credits amount into their income support account but that is not made clear at all.

I intend to write back and say that although I want to pay the money back to them I want the bill to be correct. I want to point out that it is not clear that the money for pension credits should go to the income support account and if this is the case then they should make it clear.

I also want to point out the the lists of transactions are incorrect. I want to do this without saying what their mistakes are. My reason for that is because they should have all of this information on their system and there is no reason not to get it right. I am worried that if I supply them with the correct list they could come back to me later disputing amounts and blaming me on the basis that they were acting on information supplied by me.

I'm not just being a jerk about this. I know that the civil service will have other people look at this case in the future and assess it's merit. These are unlikely to be the people handling the case now and will simply see mistakes and want them rectifed. I want this situation to be concluded in the space of one payment or group of payments from me and for that to be the end of it.

Does this all seem reasonable to you?

Thanks in advance

I would just get back on to your MP and tell them you are sick of being messed about by staff at DWP.  Explain the situation to the MP and tell him/her that you need details of the amount(s) to be repaid and the account(s) into which each amount is to be paid.  Further, you want a written assurance that DWP will not have any future right to collect further monies if their calculations are wrong.

Alice_Holt

I would agree,  it is concerning that even now they have listed transactions which are incorrect / incomplete
also
I don't think it unreasonable to expect the DWP to:
a) Give you a full explanation of how this sad saga occurred, an assurance that you will not receive any more erroneous payments, and an indemnity should this happen;
b) Some financial compensation for your time and effort in trying to sort out their mess and seeking to return these monies to them.

TELLIT01

DWP just expect people to roll over and accept whatever they say.  There was a period a few years ago when there was a purge on alleged overpayments to claimants.  Some of these dating back many years, sometimes literally decades.  An appeal against one of the supposed overpayments was passed to a DM in our office and he requested full details of the dates and amounts of the overpayment.  The people responsible for demanding the repayments in the first place were unable to provide any hard evidence to support their demand.  That was not a rare occurrence.

John72Oliver

John72Oliver said:

TELLIT01 said:

As with the OP, best advice is to contact your MP and tell them that DWP aren't interested in recovering the money.

He's right to a degree but my MP made it very clear that he wouldn't get involved unless I have made a reasonable effort to deal with this for myself. It's possible that your MP may be different.

calcotti

TELLIT01 said:

DWP just expect people to roll over and accept whatever they say.  There was a period a few years ago when there was a purge on alleged overpayments to claimants.  Some of these dating back many years, sometimes literally decades.  An appeal against one of the supposed overpayments was passed to a DM in our office and he requested full details of the dates and amounts of the overpayment.  The people responsible for demanding the repayments in the first place were unable to provide any hard evidence to support their demand.  That was not a rare occurrence.

And even worse now with DWP Debt Management dealing with Tax Credit recovery where claimant is passed back and forth between DWP and HMRC.

John72Oliver

TELLIT01 said:

I would just get back on to your MP and tell them you are sick of being messed about by staff at DWP.  Explain the situation to the MP and tell him/her that you need details of the amount(s) to be repaid and the account(s) into which each amount is to be paid.  Further, you want a written assurance that DWP will not have any future right to collect further monies if their calculations are wrong.

Thank you TELLIT01. I agree. I have written back to my MP with a copy of the letter and a list of my concerns asking if mediation is still an option on the grounds that DWP are still not acting responsibly and I would like the authority of my MP to push them into doing so.

John72Oliver

Response from my MP:

Dear John,

Thank you for your email.  Firstly we are pleased you have received a response – we too received a reply and we will provide a copy of that below for your information at the end of this email.  We do appreciate your concerns and feel these are very valid.  Without divulging confidence we have a case where a constituent is being chased for “overpayments” which “allegedly” date back to the early 1990’s.  

Therefore we are happy to continue mediating and we will write again to the DWP with the issues you have raised and seek some further and necessary assurances for you.  We do have a direct email and name now to progress this and hopefully it will not be too long before we can come back to you but in any event will do our best to keep you updated.

Kind regards,

Gig1968

I would have just kept it. Checked the law if it was on my side I'd be enjoying the DWP donations. But seriously having read your posts you should charge an amount to the DWP for the time and effort that you have put into sorting out. Probably amounts to days

TELLIT01

John72Oliver said:

Response from my MP:

Dear John,

Thank you for your email.  Firstly we are pleased you have received a response – we too received a reply and we will provide a copy of that below for your information at the end of this email.  We do appreciate your concerns and feel these are very valid.  Without divulging confidence we have a case where a constituent is being chased for “overpayments” which “allegedly” date back to the early 1990’s.  

Therefore we are happy to continue mediating and we will write again to the DWP with the issues you have raised and seek some further and necessary assurances for you.  We do have a direct email and name now to progress this and hopefully it will not be too long before we can come back to you but in any event will do our best to keep you updated.

Kind regards,

It would seem your MP is as impressed as most DWP staff are with the system for recovery of alleged debts taking back decades.

John72Oliver

I find the fact that the DWP is in such a broken state to the point of just burning public money without knowing it a lot more distressing than I have found this whole situation. I work within a very large government organisation and it's having problems, but not as blindly as DWP.

I respect the point of view of anyone who would keep the money or charge DWP for their time but all of my friends and family are tax payers and everyone else is part of a national economy which is in crisis. Although the sum of money that I would take is tiny compared to the economy, I can't see how I wouldn't be punishing them all because of a broken system. There isn't a sum of money that would make me want to do that.