Complaining about "Office of Public Guardian"

proformance

Hi all,

This is probably a strange question, but I have been waiting for over 4 months for the Office of the Public Guardian to get in touch with me to pay the shortfall for both the health and financial affairs Power of Attorney applications as they deemed my applications ineligible for the 50% reduced rate.

I've called them over 20 times (each time I have been on hold for at least 1 hour) and sent countless emails and while there have been a couple of responses from one or two good eggs, there ultimately has not been any real progress, and the department has effectively been holding my £82 indefinitely. 

I've asked for a refund several times now, but can't seem to get that sorted either.

Who can I raise this with? As "Axis" is in my application reference number, I guess it has something to do with the communications organisation?

Maybe I should write to "an" MP, but I'm not sure who?

Thanks,

Z

Savvy_Sue

The only MP it's worth writing to is your own ...

tacpot12

Have you tried the complaints procedure here: Complaints procedure - Office of the Public Guardian - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Pennylane

I was going to suggest what tacpot said.

The OPG are useless. I received an email from them SO full of spelling mistakes and poor grammar that I assumed it was a hoax. Every third word was a spelling mistake it was that bad. 

I got in touch with them and copied the email to them and they replied saying it was genuine and the person who wrote it DID work for them. I was disgusted and told them so and they replied and said they would discuss it further with her!!!  In my opinion she should be sacked or disciplined. How can anybody get paid to send out rubbish like that?  They are a disgrace.

lincroft1710

Pennylane said:

I was going to suggest what tacpot said.

The OPG are useless. I received an email from them SO full of spelling mistakes and poor grammar that I assumed it was a hoax. Every third word was a spelling mistake it was that bad. 

I got in touch with them and copied the email to them and they replied saying it was genuine and the person who wrote it DID work for them. I was disgusted and told them so and they replied and said they would discuss it further with her!!!  In my opinion she should be sacked or disciplined. How can anybody get paid to send out rubbish like that?  They are a disgrace.

It is very difficult to sack a person just because they made spelling errors, especially if they have worked at OPG for more than 2 years. Their performance may warrant retraining, redeployment to another area of work or some form of disciplinary action. Some blame must lie with the line manager for not monitoring the person's output or placing them in a position where they are incapable of performing the task satisfactorily.


As you have no right to know what action would be taken against the employee, "discussing it with her" is actually the best you can expect and some may argue you shouldn't even have been told this. 

Marcon

proformance said:

Hi all,

This is probably a strange question, but I have been waiting for over 4 months for the Office of the Public Guardian to get in touch with me to pay the shortfall for both the health and financial affairs Power of Attorney applications as they deemed my applications ineligible for the 50% reduced rate.

I've called them over 20 times (each time I have been on hold for at least 1 hour) and sent countless emails and while there have been a couple of responses from one or two good eggs, there ultimately has not been any real progress, and the department has effectively been holding my £82 indefinitely. 

I've asked for a refund several times now, but can't seem to get that sorted either.

Who can I raise this with? As "Axis" is in my application reference number, I guess it has something to do with the communications organisation?

Maybe I should write to "an" MP, but I'm not sure who?

If you've spent 20 hours hanging on the phone, I'm not surprised you are fed up!

That said, I'm not sure I understand your e-mail, so possibly they don't either. You want them to get in touch with you to pay the shortfall because your applications were ineligible for the 50% reduced rate, which suggests you owe them money - but you then go on to say that you've 'asked for a refund several times...and can't get that sorted either'. 

MPs can only deal with correspondence from their own constituents, so why would you write to anyone other than your own constituency MP?

proformance

I haven't Marcon said:

proformance said:

Hi all,

This is probably a strange question, but I have been waiting for over 4 months for the Office of the Public Guardian to get in touch with me to pay the shortfall for both the health and financial affairs Power of Attorney applications as they deemed my applications ineligible for the 50% reduced rate.

I've called them over 20 times (each time I have been on hold for at least 1 hour) and sent countless emails and while there have been a couple of responses from one or two good eggs, there ultimately has not been any real progress, and the department has effectively been holding my £82 indefinitely. 

I've asked for a refund several times now, but can't seem to get that sorted either.

Who can I raise this with? As "Axis" is in my application reference number, I guess it has something to do with the communications organisation?

Maybe I should write to "an" MP, but I'm not sure who?

If you've spent 20 hours hanging on the phone, I'm not surprised you are fed up!

That said, I'm not sure I understand your e-mail, so possibly they don't either. You want them to get in touch with you to pay the shortfall because your applications were ineligible for the 50% reduced rate, which suggests you owe them money - but you then go on to say that you've 'asked for a refund several times...and can't get that sorted either'. 

MPs can only deal with correspondence from their own constituents, so why would you write to anyone other than your own constituency MP?

Evidently you understand everything 😜

I've suggested that IF they cannot arrange a way in which to take the balance shortfall, then obviously i would like a refund... Is 3 months not a reasonable amount of time? 

They've since blamed a high workload, a COVID outbreak on the office and an office relocation in this time, and while they were previously committing to time frames in their emails back to me, they've since said that they can "no longer mention timelines and someone will be in touch when they get to it".

McKneff

If you have paid, and you don't qualify for the discount why are you expecting a refund.
Why  are they chasing money from you. 
It's not clear in your post at all 
First you say they want money from you, then you say you want a refund.....

proformance

McKneff said:

If you have paid, and you don't qualify for the discount why are you expecting a refund.
Why  are they chasing money from you. 
It's not clear in your post at all 
First you say they want money from you, then you say you want a refund.....

I literally don't think I could be anymore clear. I do appreciate you trying to help here, but perhaps this thread isn't for you... 

msb1234

proformance said:

McKneff said:

If you have paid, and you don't qualify for the discount why are you expecting a refund.
Why  are they chasing money from you. 
It's not clear in your post at all 
First you say they want money from you, then you say you want a refund.....

I literally don't think I could be anymore clear. I do appreciate you trying to help here, but perhaps this thread isn't for you... 

No, your post isn’t at all clear! On first reading, it sounds like you’re asking them for a refund. After your further comments, I gather that you’ve applied for both the financial and health POAs, sent in 50% of the fees as you believed you were eligible for a reduction. Now, after not being able to work out how to pay the full fee, you’ve decided you want a refund. 

Surely when you were notified that you didn’t qualify for a discount you were either sent the application forms back OR sent details of how to pay the full amount? If neither of those things happened, how WERE you notified of your error?

msb1234

On another note, you start off saying you’ve been waiting over 4 months for a reply and yet you only sent in the application this year. Presumably they took a couple of weeks at least to contact you to let you know you’d not sent enough money, so that’s only 3 months. 

When my mum sent her forms in, we made an error on one of them. So the forms came back. Only the cheque for the correct form had been cashed - the incorrect form cheque hadn’t. 

Have you checked that the money has actually been taken from the bank yet?