Why is "check my pension" so slow to update and so useless?

ProDave

molerat said:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/complain-about-hmrc

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/

The latter often has a miraculous effect.  Senior managers don't like getting dragged up in front of parliamentary committees.

Thank you.  I have filled in an on line complaint.

german_keeper

A little bit of insight from someone who did 40 years in DWP (actually DHSS and Benefits Agency when I was there) and then Inland Revenue and finally HMRC. I never rose from the exalted level of Executive Officer, so very much a personal opinion; I was never anywhere near the corridors of power.

Turn the clock back 20/30 years I worked on Family Credit, Disability Living Allowance and Invalid Care Allowance (now Carer's Allowance). I was a highly trained, experienced Adjudication Officer and if I do say so myself something of an expert. If a claimant phoned the Helpline and the operator couldn't answer the question they had a clear escalation procedure to transfer the call to me. I was usually able to explain to the claimant, very importantly in "layman's terms" the answer to their question, although very often not what they wanted to hear.  

I use the word "claimant" quite purposely as there was a point when I sensed things began to change. Senior management decided that it was vital that we should no longer refer to "claimants" but "customers", despite the fact that they were claiming, the word claimant isn't derogatory, and as they had no choice who they dealt with they weren't really customers. There definitely seemed to be a big change and senior management stopped behaving like managers and more like politicians.

Nowadays if you call the Helpline, you will likely speak to someone on minimum wage, with no technical training whatsoever, who follows a call type process. I never witnessed this but as I understand it the operator will listen for key words and then use a touch screen facility to ultimately read out to you what it says on the screen in front of them. Despite the gold plated pension staff turnover is high; if you are lucky you might speak to someone who has stuck it out for a few years and been sufficiently competent to build up a bit of background knowledge.

Meanwhile when presented with the reality of the situation from ministers, senior management won't say "come on we can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" they will say "yes sir no sir three bags full sir" and come up with ludicrous slogans like "more for less" and then try and convince the staff that they can provide a better service at a fraction of the cost. It's all down to "efficiency savings" don't you know.

I suspect things will only get worse. Whichever party wins the election efficiency savings will be very much the flavour of the month. In my eyes there are 2 questions to ask. Should public services to be provided at the best value for money for the taxpayer? Or should public services be provided at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer? Unfortunately I think that debate has already been won, and the winner is the latter. Until of course the individual is negatively impacted when their opinion suddenly changes.

Rant over!!!!!!!



  

ProDave

^^^  EXCELLENT POST

That is just how I feel about the "service" on offer and feel you have hit the nail on the head.

But my point is, if the "system" was set up right, i.e. when I pay National insurance as part of my self assessment, it is not exactly difficult for a computer program to say "ah he's paid a years NI contribution, add an NI credit to his record for the year"

If the system was set up properly that would happen automatically and quickly.  It always has in previous years.

So the "system" being broken is fault #1.

Then the lousy customer service as described above is fault #2

It must be very demoralising to work for somewhere like that now, knowing your objective is not to solve the problem, but fob them off and shut them up, possibly by making them lose the will to keep on trying.  If that is what they are hoping will happen with me, they have picked the wrong person.

badmemory

There used to be someone who posted on here who used to work for HMRC & according to what he said (rough translation) the systems were specified by senior people who didn't & had never really worked them & they didn't ask the lower status employees who did know what they were doing what THEY needed the systems to do.  Then they replaced all the people who did know what they were doing with cheaper "phone monkeys".  I have to wonder how much cheaper it would be if the job was done right from day one.

ProDave

Yes I am flabbergasted and just how broken the system is.  If HMRC was a business, it would have gone bust by now as no customer would put up with the abysmal "service"  Sadly as tax and NI payers we don't have the luxury of choosing someone else to pay our tax and NI to.

Still no resolution to my situation, the promised re allocation has not happened and no response to my complaint.

Surely I cannot be the only one finding the system so totally and utterly unfit for purpose?

ProDave

Well a slight update.  This morning I received a response to my complaint.  the gist of it being they have sent an urgent request to get my errant NI payment re allocated.

The email finishes "You can also visit www.gov.uk/perosnal-tax-account to check your National Insurance records on-line."

You guessed it, that page does not exist.  That is doing nothing to make me think they are in any way competent. 

eastcorkram

Last few days , on the forecast page, all I get is a message saying, Sorry there is a problem with this service. 

molerat

ProDave said:

Well a slight update.  This morning I received a response to my complaint.  the gist of it being they have sent an urgent request to get my errant NI payment re allocated.

The email finishes "You can also visit www.gov.uk/perosnal-tax-account to check your National Insurance records on-line."

You guessed it, that page does not exist.  That is doing nothing to make me think they are in any way competent. 

Did you type that or copy and paste ?  The correct spelling of personal works

ProDave

molerat said:

ProDave said:

Well a slight update.  This morning I received a response to my complaint.  the gist of it being they have sent an urgent request to get my errant NI payment re allocated.

The email finishes "You can also visit www.gov.uk/perosnal-tax-account to check your National Insurance records on-line."

You guessed it, that page does not exist.  That is doing nothing to make me think they are in any way competent. 

Did you type that or copy and paste ?  The correct spelling of personal works

Copied and pasted from the email.  Obviously the sender typed it with wonky fingers.

eastcorkram

eastcorkram said:

Last few days , on the forecast page, all I get is a message saying, Sorry there is a problem with this service. 

I reported this issue, as it sort of invited me to.
Got an email answer today, saying that there is an issue with my account, and it's been passed on to the correct department, and this might take 8 to 10 weeks, but might be earlier than that. 

I've no idea what the issue is. I did buy back one year a couple of weeks ago, and I thought , obviously that's going to take a few weeks to update. I didn't think it would block access to the information though. 

Has anyone had this issue before?