DWP not paid the amount they quoted in their letter

Meandthetall_Man

After listening to Martin, my wife established that she had a shortfall of NI payments and chose to pay for seven years, after she received a letter from the DWP informing her of how much she would receive for each year she paid upto a maximum of eight years shortfall.
She waited at least 14 weeks before she was informed of the amount she would receive.  This was significantly less than what was in the DWP letter.
She phoned the DWP and was told that they had not finished looking at the first year she paid for, although the shortfall is much more than one year.  We await for a final statement from the DWP but just thought I would put this on here for anyone who is still waiting to be paid - we gave the DWP a lot of money in December but to date have not received anything in any form of correspondence explaining the amoount they say they will pay.

eskbanker

In order for anyone to comment meaningfully, can you share the detail of what her entitlement originally was, what she was informed it could be increased to, and what it's been updated to?

p00hsticks

Is your wife over State Pension Age ?  

QrizB

Meandthetall_Man said:

.   she received a letter from the DWP informing her of how much she would receive for each year she paid upto a maximum of eight years shortfall.

Can she share the pertinent details from this letter?

What was her previous entitlement, what was she expecting to improve it to and what is she receiving now?

Meandthetall_Man

My wife is over the Sate Pension age and has been receiving this for four + years.  She was receiving £175 per week and the DWP letter stated if she paid for eight years National Insurance she would get the maximum pension i.e. £230 per week.  So she has paid this at £820 per year. and is now is getting £209 per i.e. the equivalent of paying for 5 years NI.  DWP are still deliberating about it and it is now 6 months since we paid for NI.  Hope that is sufficient information for you.

molerat

The problem is that once beyond state pension age it is a manual pretty much pencil, paper and calculator exercise.  As long as she only paid for years quoted on the letter all will be sorted eventually with back payments as appropriate.  Have you checked her on line NI record to see which years have been applied compared to what she paid for ?

1957DfurdPensionist

molerat said:

The problem is that once beyond state pension age it is a manual pretty much pencil, paper and calculator exercise.  As long as she only paid for years quoted on the letter all will be sorted eventually with back payments as appropriate.  Have you checked her on line NI record to see which years have been applied compared to what she paid for ?

I beg to disagree - I quickly devised a simple spreadsheet that, given any valid future new State Pension forecast prior to SPa i.e. from 2016 onwards, works out weekly nSP entitlement to the penny taking into account the subsequent VC treat-as-paid dates and all subsequent Triple Lock adjustments and Extra Pension if Deferral is part of the calculation.  What I can easily agree with is the suggestion that DWP can't seem to administrate this simple repetitive mathematical exercise without regularly cøcking it up and mercilessly neglecting us / causing us to eat up our remaining life expectancy whilst they runaround silently like headless chickens behind the scenes when asked to respond to queries about their inepitudes!

Of course it all should have been automated years ago like you might expect from a first world digitally fluent administration as of at least 10 years ago.