Thread: 'new' csa and the will to live

Right ready for this

As said before I knew things were changing and due illness problems I try and keep on top of them.

End November I received a letter stating from certain date payments would be made directly to me for absent parent csa contributions and then I would need to inform Income support appropriately, I rang income support and csa for eplanation and left if fairly happy.

As ususal go through the pile with the post it notes and one reminds me to inform income support if csa money arrives, fair enough, but none appeared, so decide to ring them and ask when will it start and how much roughly. I asked was it put off till new year and was told not. You see anyone receiving income supoort and csa will know untill now regular letters arrived saying you could keep this soon when it changes and you could keep that. I would ring and be told not, yet it was changing soon, and they would let me know. I got these letters for over two years

The woman I spoke to said they had been paying me and my first reaction was thank god I was checking up on this. They said it started in November as their letter refered and was paid into my bank account. I said it hadnt appeared and was their a problem to be told the account and pardon if I state I started to panic. Not with the woman but as to the status of the said account, pretty dire

Any how I asked them when they got these details as my account was changed in second week of october (more accurate) and all benefits were accuratley and promptly going into that 'a ok'. First thing she came back to was its not our fault. What is I asked your money has gone elsewhere and if its been 'gobbled up'
my language, by you old account then 'thats not our problem'
her words.

I politely asked them why they had the old details and was told it was my fault and not their responsibility to update details. I said to be fair my details were updated via job centre plus and your brief letter dated end october refers to you'll get the details from them. How am I to know you ask for details in september from job centre and refer to them as the current details. I asked how am I to know they have not told you. She said it was your fault and the loss of the money was not her problem and basically go away. I asked if she could speak to her supervisor and ask was it possible to request the money back from the bank as a mistake and pay it into the correct one, she said Ive heared of that sort of thing I dont know, hang on. She then proceded to speak to someone else if full haring of me and stated, Ive got this person on the phone, she gave us the wrong details, weve paid it and shes blaming us, its not our fault is it. I heared another voice say no.

She came back to me and then said go to citazens advice. I said what do I do about income support and will they penalise me and she said she didnt know.

Now even freaky me can see mistakes happen and I was just asking for help. I asked why they couldnt have sent me a brief note prior to payment stating account and ammount and date and any problems ring us now. This was after all the first time I was ever receiving money from the csa and its new to me. I understand changes in details need to be given by me but I was understood as date of letter was end october that they would have the correct details used in october, how was I to know they got them in septermber. D'you see my point. No ones died but because of an error my bank has ate the money. She didnt give a poop, pardenthe language, I was by now crying.

Any how pulled myself together and decided spur of moment to go to bank and plead for help, I dont normally go out on my own due to illness and apart from taking my son out of school on pretence of family ememrgency I didnt know what to do, I didnt do that, so called a taxi to wait for me.

Got to bank managed to get some of it and aware also account charges building up and loan unpaid and therefore charges now getting out of hand as they havnt replied to letter. As account seems to still have touchable overdraft I have at least realised they cant have got the letter so know to deal with that tommorow. They arent going to be happy with me.

I ring the csa back when home and say I got some of it and please double check my details are now correct. Done. When asking to complian they kept saying they were not part of the govt anymore and a seperate agency. I asked did that mean they were a company and they said sort of. So I asked does that make me a customer? The reply was yes. So I said as a new customer is it normal to be treat this way and if so, what does that say about the 'new' csa.

I never had any problems with them before and got the impression I wasnt the first querying payments and feel tainted as a pain in the bum.
This wasnt a small ammount of money involved, mega in my world and I didnt freak out, I was calm, polite and just asked for advice. Why was I treat like something of the bottom of a shoe.

So 'new' csa is your new slogan 'its not our fault' I as your customer dont need to stress who is at fault, it doesnt matter, I dont want your head to roll, I just asked for help.

This sound familiar to anyone else?

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I today received my first communication from csa telling me ammount and dates of payments.

They last told me a payment was received by me on the second week nov and that it would follow four weekly or roughly then

The letter Ive got today after ringing the income support the last time with above dates have been told the payments will now start on the last day of dec and then four weekly from that.

Now surely they have lost two weeks and how does this relate to my income support?

Hope you are feeling ok now, sounds like a nightmare (funnily enough like my phone calls to the Halifax these days!)

We had the same sort of thing when they changed the way DLA was pais around the same time as you. We had changed our bank details in that month, but as no-one had told us DLA would be paid differently, we had no idea it would be a problem.

Luckily the people at DLA and IS were a lot better to deal with.

You do need to protect yourself with these things, making sure you have enough money to live on.

Unfortunately I've just got my DLA renewal forms through, so that's thrown me into a panic (all contact with the DWP does that to me since an appeal fiasco a few years ago).

Hope all of this gets sorted soon- and the CSA should have notes on the system if the previous relationship was abusive (or at least they used to) to allow more sensitivity. Not that that is possible from some of the staff- emotionless cyborgs!

I'm off to the council welfare rights next Monday to get the form filled in. I couldn't even sleep last night with the worry. It isn't even up until May, but now I get to worry about it all over Christmas- Thanks DWP!

I don't know how we would manage with out it. And they scare the hell out of me.

I have twice complained about the csa on their website through the online form
Complaints - Child Support Agency

they actually rang me back quickly and both complaints got resolved quickly, one was about the arrears being low and these were raised to the 40% threshold

and the other time the arrears were paid to the sec of state rather than me and I got these back quickly through the accounts dept, they claimed it back