I’ve made overpayments and CSA avoid telling me how to get money back!

June 23, 2016

I’ve never argued any payment to the csa, but in April last year (2015) my daughter told me she’d dropped out of college. In June 2015 I called csa to inform them, they weren’t interested as child benefit still bring paid. I called again every month but no one was interested. I asked for a manager to call me, this didn’t happen.  In January 2016 I called again, this time I made a complaint. I spoke to a case worker and offered the information and contact details so they could find out for themselves she wasn’t in college, she refused to take the information as apparently they cannot contact colleges?! We never had a call back with regards to the complaint and in April I called again (a long time I know, my wife was seriously ill and in and out of hospital) and spoke to a team leader who told me he’d never heard of the problems we were having before!! He confirmed finally that the child benefit had stopped in December 2015! It only took them 4 months to tell me and I rang them!! I said I was stopping payment, which he agreed but I got the usual save the money just in case! He said he’d find out what had gone wrong with this case, he said more should of been done sooner and he would find the exact date child benefit stopped, he’d get the case closed, work out the over payment, and go to her or get a repayment secures and he promised to call me every other Tuesday to keep me updated. What a fool I was I believed him! Never got a call back! ? On 16th June I called AGAIN, I had to go through the story for the millionth time and was told that they acknowledged the over payment, they would check policy and call the ex to request repayment. I was told I would get a call back with an update 2 days later at the latest.

7:45 tonight the phone rings and after going through the story again I was told to go to the small claims court to get my money back as it was direct payments they are not liable. My wife then took the phone and said no way. You knew the dates benefit stopped and yet even though we called nobody told us. She also told them that they had broken their own policy by not responding to our complaint within 15 working days. She told him she was going to the press, his response was don’t get upset about what I’ve said tonight, just let it fly!!!! Big time back tracking knowing he’s being recorded on the phone! It got to 8:10pm and he said he had to go as people were waiting to go home and lock up. He assured us he would call us tomorrow after trying to call the ex and discussing it with a couple of people, my wife suggested he read the file before he called. Anyone got any ideas to get my money back. It’s now a thing of principle and my phone bill!!

Comments

  • eve32 says:

    I feel your pain. Although I am a resident parent, I had the same experience with them with regards to promises of call backs that are never made, tried to escalate my complaint and was promised call backs from a manager that never happened. Dealing with incompetent staff, who you have to explain the whole story again from the beginning and what makes it worse they are not even aware of their policies and seem to have no knowledge of the system. Any action that is promised isn’t taken and you to constantly phone to follow up and get no where. It’s just an awful service.

    Big respect to you for always paying regular maintenance to your child. My ex did everything he could to not pay towards our two children and had the ability to reduce his income to half that of minimum wage, then there was an error on the system for 8 months that didn’t generate a payment schedule that was supposedly with IT department that never got fixed. I phoned every week and had to explain and was told oh yeah there is an error on the system. I closed the case in the end as I found it all too stressful.

    I hope you manage to get your overpayment back and can help support your daughter by helping her out with clothes taking her out for nice meals and time together still.

  • debbie says:

    i have been fighting for 11 years i got everything back they owed me and compensation, i am currently taking them to court as i paid huge amounts of money when they was not habitual resident.
    you need to write a stage one complaint to falkirk, they have 14 days to respond, no joy write a stage two complaint. no joy you can then go to the independent case examiner who does everything, ask them for all your records under the data protection. everything you send send by recorded signed for, every phone call log the date and time.
    if they dont repond to your complaint write to jim edwards the csa director you will get sorted and compo.
    ring the csa ask them for the address to send a complaint.
    good luck

  • >