To think that the people behind the Tax Credits helpline...

[ICanHearYou]

..Should at LEAST be able to input numbers correctly?

They have missed off a 0 from my details so its all incorrect and I am short around £80 a week!

It takes Ages to phone them too, at least 25 mins on hold

gah

[ScarlettDragon]

YANBU they're bloody useless! Years ago DH lost his job so I phoned them to inform them that we would be claiming JSA instead. A week later and no money goes into the bank. Phoned and apparently it was correct, they'd added the income we would be getting from benefits to the income we would have been getting from DH's job which he no longer had. It took 3 weeks around and around 10000 phone calls before I got through to someone with a bit of common sense who could see the mistake that had been made. Money was reinstated and we were back payed. It didn't help us in those 3 weeks though when nearly fricking starved because we had no money coming in at all!

[ScarlettDragon]

paid not payed

[ICanHearYou]

24 minutes on the phone and shes still trying to find the right bit for the box

[IAmTheGodOfTitsAndWine]

I used to work there, many many years ago. That's an easily fixed mistake, but it shouldn't have happened. Everyone is supposed to quickly check the figures. I would have wanted to know if someone I was responsible for was doing that, but the only way of getting feedback was if the person affected made a formal complaint, otherwise it never got passed on. Not sure if it's still the same.

Saying that, my son's name has a rogue 'O' in it, instead of a 'D'. I don't correct them because it amuses me.

[ICanHearYou]

She has confused me now.

Last year I earned 7630

this year I am earning 5600 (estimate)

she reckons that me updating my payment information won't increase my payments because there is not a drop of more than 2500

I don't really understand that.

[ICanHearYou]

IAm perhaps you can explain that?

[LightastheBreeze]

I can remember when I rang them up about a small difference in my wage and they succeeded in completely taking my DH wage off . I ended up getting money I wasn't entitled too and when I rang them up they said for me to carry on getting the money then to pay it all back, this would have been well over £1000, the following year.

I told them it was their mistake and insisted they put it right now as I did not want to keep getting money I was not entitled too. They did put it right when i insisted, I can imagine how much worse it must be when they stop paying you money through one of their errors.

[misstiredbuthappy]

They are useless theyve been under paying me for the past year and will only back date a months worth. Be a diffrent matter if they had over payed me .

[ICanHearYou]

They are useless, I kind of get now that they only take into account changes of £2500 or more but despite that they are STILL shafting me around £100 a WEEK! Since May 24th. So I am owed around £400 extra from them. Hopefully I will see that soon!

[MrsAlexVause]

They are rubbish. I need to ring them but I'm too scared! Was without money for 3 months last time I spoke to them. I'm still paying off their last fuck up.

[throckenholt]

We filled in our claim for and they put my salary down as 0 despite working 30+ hours per week (and despite being given the correct figure). So they worked out we were entitled to shedloads and promptly paid it into our account before we even had a letter. I happened to check the account that day and couldn't work out why we had been paid nearly £2000 !

We were lucky in that we rang them up and it was very quick and straightforward and they corrected it straight away. Still haven't had the payment backlog sorted though because we haven't yet been entitled to the amount they paid us (sometime in the next few months we will get back to the right level).

Amazing how wrong they can get it without anyone checking.

[Babyroobs]

There is now a £2.5k disregard, so unless your income drops by more than £2.5k your payments won't increase. Likewise payments won't drop unless your income rises by more than £5k .

[YesJesseARobot]

Last year I was informed that I was not entitled to working tax credits because I had been incapacitated in hospital or in prison

I hadn't even tried to claim them - I'm a carer.

[mrstigs]

When I was made redundant a couple of years ago I rang to take off my income and the childcare element we had. They asked if anything else had changed and I said no. When the (actually rather confusing) paperwork turned up I saw the childcare had been taken off and my income was 0 so put it away, thought the amount hadn't gone down that much but thought it was down to big drop in household income. The next renewal it turned out they had my dh down as working 40+ hours a week but his income as 0. So we were overpaid. I was told as I hadn't double checked the form it was entirely our fault. They have a point of course (and I won't make the mistake again, despite still finding the forms very confusing!) but I was quite annoyed that they had cocked up the form in the first place yet spoke to us like benefit scammers. Blooming stupid system it is, seems rife with mistakes.

[LightastheBreeze]

It seems they are quite adept at taking a complete salary off when you ring them up about any changes, judging by this thread.

[TheGrandHighWitch]

I am well peeved with tax credits at the moment. Gave estimate for income last year when husband got a new job. Turns out that estimate should have been around £1900 higher (because I had given them an estimated net figure rather than gross). As a result they have dropped our payments by £145 a week. So we are £1900 ish 'better off' because of the money already taken by tax and national insurance but also £6k ish worse off in tax credits because of it.

[Clarinet9]

YesJesse
yo might want to consider giving them a ring, a few years ago I had a similar letter, awarding me a very generous amount to be paid weekly into the building society account of someone I had never heard of.

Contacted them and it appeared someone had made a huge claim in my name with so many details that were clearly false (and that were easily checkable) to be paid into their bank account.

Took a bit of faffing to sort but I did since I was terrified of having to pay it back!

[Clarinet9]

Can anyone explain the 2500 thing for me and why it is a 5000 increase, that is a pretty chunky increase yet they keep paying out?

[ICanHearYou]

Okay so if you call them and you earn £2500 or less than you did last year they won't change your payments (which are based on last year)

But that will make a difference for next year, so I am going to get more money for next year because I earn considerably less this year (by £2200 annoyingly) than I did last year.

[FloozeyLoozey]

Grandhighwitch, but wasn't that your own fault for giving them the wrong info?

They are rubbish generally though. Wish you could just update your details yourself online without having to speak to anyone, takes ages to get through.

[Babyroobs]

I think they allow you to earn £5k more without the tax credit amounts changing so that people are not discouraged from looking for promotion or doing overtime because they think they will lose all their tax credits. However I think the following year if earnings stay the same, the tax credits will drop.

[TheGrandHighWitch]

FloozeyLoozey It may have been my fault for not realising they wanted gross not net figures but it still doesn't seem reasonable to suffer a £6000 decrease because I am less than £2000 better off than I said. Except of course I am not better off because that 2k goes to hmrc via tax etc. As far as I am concerned, tax credits should be based on what income actually goes into the claimants accounts and should not take into account money going to the government.

[TodaysAGoodDay]

Anyone know what time of day to call them to get an actual answer? Three times I've called them, been on hold for almost 30 minutes all 3 times, then had two of those calls cut off, and one put through to some 'Private tax' helpline, who said they had had a lot of calls transferred to them recently from the Tax Credits line.
Any suggestions?
TIA.

[ssd]

god knows, whenever I call I make sure I've got the next hour free, it takes bloody ages and even then you get a different answer every time.