Voluntary NI Contributions – What to Expect After Requesting a Callback

blobthebuilder

I requested a call back on the last possible day (5th April) and received an interim acknowledgement on 16th April when a lady from the DWP telephoned my landline to ask for my DOB and NINO. I was told that one of their experts would ring me in due course, but I have regularly checked my inward call records since then and I have heard nothing further from them. It is now more than 8 weeks since I submitted my call back request on 5th April and 7 weeks since they made their first call to record my details. Is anyone else in a similar position?

Silvertabby

blobthebuilder said:

I requested a call back on the last possible day (5th April) and received an interim acknowledgement on 16th April when a lady from the DWP telephoned my landline to ask for my DOB and NINO. I was told that one of their experts would ring me in due course, but I have regularly checked my inward call records since then and I have heard nothing further from them. It is now more than 8 weeks since I submitted my call back request on 5th April and 7 weeks since they made their first call to record my details. Is anyone else in a similar position?

They are probably working their way through in the order that the enquiries were first received, so likely to be some time before they get down to you.

Dazed_and_C0nfused

Silvertabby said:

blobthebuilder said:

I requested a call back on the last possible day (5th April) and received an interim acknowledgement on 16th April when a lady from the DWP telephoned my landline to ask for my DOB and NINO. I was told that one of their experts would ring me in due course, but I have regularly checked my inward call records since then and I have heard nothing further from them. It is now more than 8 weeks since I submitted my call back request on 5th April and 7 weeks since they made their first call to record my details. Is anyone else in a similar position?

They are probably working their way through in the order that the enquiries were first received, so likely to be some time before they get down to you.

Apparently Joan from the Swindon office is doing the proper call backs.  She's hoping to finish her list by 2035 😳

CorrineMitch

We had same experience, a lady rang and checked my husbands NI number and date of birth, then said, Thank you, and hung up!!  No explanation at all.  Thank goodness for this forum as we were really worried that we were not going to be able to pay back some years.  We can now wait for the next call.

molerat

Silvertabby said:

blobthebuilder said:

I requested a call back on the last possible day (5th April) and received an interim acknowledgement on 16th April when a lady from the DWP telephoned my landline to ask for my DOB and NINO. I was told that one of their experts would ring me in due course, but I have regularly checked my inward call records since then and I have heard nothing further from them. It is now more than 8 weeks since I submitted my call back request on 5th April and 7 weeks since they made their first call to record my details. Is anyone else in a similar position?

They are probably working their way through in the order that the enquiries were first received, so likely to be some time before they get down to you.

Martin said on his show the other week they are prioritising those closest to retirement.

1957DfurdPensionist

I've just received my "callback".  Please note that I am now resident abroad so callbacks to UK residents may follow a different path e.g. maybe if we live abroad we can expect a new luxury of receiving the next communication by email, whereas in UK pehaps you have to wait for another call more specific to your personal case.., who knows which is preferable until we see some actual content! ... but anyway here's my take ...

They've "drafted-in" (their words today) a special call back team to sit and make calls to the numbers we left online, request our NINo, check where in the world we are, and our DoB, request an email address ... then to tell us to expect an email from the also new VC team, which will inform us of our NI record / part years etc. and which can be paid, at what price, and how much difference it'll make to our NSP etitlement. The email will include a direct line number to the VC team should we have queries.  I.e. now the saga is switched backed to us to make a callback unless by some miracle the new email they are promising to send as the next stage tells us something we long suffering VC questioners didn't already know!

So, nothing specific in these initial "callbacks" to our specific case, other I suppose than we may take it as an acknowledgement that they did indeed receive our online callback requests!

Just so those waiting for calls know a little more of what to expect ... the number that called me was the main International Pension Centre number +44 191 218 7777 - same number I have had to wait 30 minutes or more on (more times than I can count) when raising and querying my pension claim.

It is also the same number that called me yesterday, ringing for just a second and then stopping before I could pick up despite the phone being right next to me.  That caused me to call IPC because I optimistically thought it might be my claim case handler from whom (thus far in vain) I have also been promised callbacks.

After 30 minutes in that queue yesteray to Option 1, Claims, the agent said yes he could see the call attempt recorded on the system as "Call Attempted - Unanswered", but there was no record as to who made the attempt! 

My feeling now is that it was probably this new "drafted-in" lot  who called but just as immediately rang off yesterday.  That's because, in speaking with them today, they seemed a bit flakey in terms of unusual reverse questions like "Is your date of birth XX-XXX-XXXX?" and "Are you living in XXXXXX?" and "Is your middle name XXXXX?", albeit after you have given your NINo.  However, those of us who have worked in financial services and the like know that NINo alone is not a very secure means of verifying ID as over our lifetimes it has remained unchanged in the hands of so many employers, bank staff, insurance company/pension provider staff etc. (and goodness knows now how many so-called "data brokers").

Hopefully the new drafted-in team are not whipped or paid on the basis of "Attempted Calls" made.

So let's see now what arrives in the promised emails!

MARTAS2000

So my wife missed the call backs as she wasn't sure it wasn't a cold caller.  Anyway, she rang DWP and they said she couldn't pay anything.  When she originally looked at the Gov.UK website it clearly said she was 4 years short of a full pension.  However, the website only gave her the option to pay 3 years and so she put in a request for a call back to pay the 4th year.  However, DWP said it was not possible
Her Ni record on the Gov.UK website is saying one year short

Can anyone give advice as to what she might do next?

molerat

Which year is not full? If 2015-16 or earlier then it's likely the reason as those years will not always add value.  I assume she has a work pension, most probably public service of some sort ?  If that's the case then there's nothing she can do, I am a couple of years short with a few gaps but nothing can be done about it.

1957DfurdPensionist

MARTAS2000 said:

So my wife missed the call backs as she wasn't sure it wasn't a cold caller.  Anyway, she rang DWP and they said she couldn't pay anything.  When she originally looked at the Gov.UK website it clearly said she was 4 years short of a full pension.  However, the website only gave her the option to pay 3 years and so she put in a request for a call back to pay the 4th year.  However, DWP said it was not possible
Her Ni record on the Gov.UK website is saying one year short

Can anyone give advice as to what she might do next?

As @molerat implies, 2015/16 is an odd one.  My own view is that many of us have been denied the opportunity to buy that one because of the horrendous rush job in bringing forward the single tier State Pension by at least a year at the last minute, without noticing what differences it would make to forecasts for many of us.  Having been in the planning since at least 2013, it is clear the new State Pension was never expected to be implemented until 2017/18 at the earliest.  But what happened in 2015/16? If a 2015/16 VC makes no difference, then why was the online forecast I got in October 2016 inconsistent with the one I got in February 2020 despite me making no UK NI contributions beyond 2010?  Guess which forecast skipped over both 2014/15 AND 2015/16 (no doubt because HMRC systems could not reliably supply that data fast enough).  And guess which forecast prevailed? The later one that yields the least.  Plus the main reason we are all forecast so short of full nSP despite over 35 years contributions well before 2016 is the totally abstract COPE deduction.  And we know HMRC had retained no reliable records for contracting out (the record keeping and pension liability was of course contracted out to providers or trustees who might no longer exist!). The exception might be perhaps for civil servants in jobs for life.  My own Contracting Out record for example includes no less than 8 different episodes of contracting out including three Defined Benefit Schemes wound up prematurely years before 2016. It even includes a two year period of duplicate Contracting Out due to a crazy HMRC promotional scheme launched in the late 80s when I joined a new employer (never worked for more than one simultaneously) with two backdated free years of rebated NI contributions into a separate new DC policy that has never had any contributions from any source other than HMRC. Who knows what those duplicated two years did to my COPE number!? I am sure thousands of others signed up for these "free money and backdated too" pension policies urged on by their employer's financial advisor without ever knowing what they were signing for.  And guess what did happen around 2015/16?  Pension Reform that allowed Lambourghinis to be purchased using "windfall" funds then made super easily releasable early from DC policies like I mentioned.  No hint then of course that you might actually be cashing in a sizeable chunk of your future new State Pension, coz of something not yet dreamed of called COPE, eh?

MARTAS2000, Have DWP now written to say exactly why it is not possible under the law?  Or yet again, do they expect we just have to take some sundry agent's word for it with no written follow up?  This is why backlogs occurred in the first place.  Every time we call we get a different answer, and the number of mistakes they can make with your claim seems incredible, even stuff they put in writing. Yesterday an agent told me he was sure that he had seen cases where the financial year in which the pensioner reached SPa had been accepted for payment.  I am pretty sure that isn't normally permissible.  So I had to offer that maybe the "accepted payments" were in fact habitual Class2 contributions which had been voluntarily paid whilst the customer had continued to work?  "I don't know, maybe" was the answer.

I plan to accept no answer other than a full explanation in writing referencing the law precisely.

ManderLists

I requested a call back well before the deadline. They finally tried to call me last week, with no warning, while I was on a transatlantic flight with a follow up the next day while I was travelling on the underground to get to a train. I tried to call the number back and was hung up on several times after going through all the menus. 

I couldn't have changed my flight schedule anyway but it is rather annoying. Is there any way to get through to them to follow up?