new here so treat me gently especially if this has already been discussed before

(yes you experts can point me in the right direction if you so wish)

but I would like to tap your vast knowledge base if you don't mind?

Out of the blue the wife receives in the post a short curt letter from the Prescription Exemption Checking Service informing her that she's been a naughty person by obtaining a Free Prescription without being entitled and unless she can prove otherwise she needs to simply send them the original charge plus a nice fine for the pleasure - if she would be so kind ... end off.

Well unfortunately the wife has always paid for her prescriptions and has never obtained any for free so in my simple French ...

In their letter they do not actually supply full or checkable details,

they simply say between the date of ''A'' and the date of ''B'' (A period 80 days!) you did obtain a Free Prescription by ticking the box for people with a valid HC2 certificate .... and on checking to see what if any prescription she had, there was one for which she paid cash for! [and she most definitely did not tick any boxes?].

Now this IS where it get interesting and I have little doubt that some confusion could have come from the following ....

at the same time as she collected her last prescription [the only one this penalty charge could relate too]

she also collected one for a person for whom she is a Carer for.

And that person does have a valid HC2 certificate

- does not pay for their prescriptions

and because my wife is forever picking up from one particular pharmacy where both these prescriptions where sent to electronically ..

. they know her pretty well.

So I am of the opinion that given the person serving her - gave her two sets of prescriptions,

took her money for hers and checked the certificate for the other probably with a hand full of Prescription Scripts

- ticked the wrong box on hers

[they always complete the back of the scripts themselves as you the patient do not actually receive them any more

- your just asked to sign it as having received your medicine]

and then eventually sent them off to wherever at the NHS for processing

and now we've been hit with a Penalty Charge for someone else's mistake!

[Thanks for reading to this point and sticking with it .... I'm getting to the point. Honest]

has anyone else had to go through this particular scenario and if so how did you fare?

Yes I know I need to contact the Prescription Exemption Checking Service, which I have done ..

. but in the first instance they are both so slow and not that bright!

The way they see it is a box was ticked ... end off.

One thing they did ask was 'can we provide a receipt to prove we paid'? ...

Yer right, who is going to keep a £8.60 cash payment receipt for a prescription they bought over three months ago?

Next I've been back to the pharmacy and they are in total agreement with me (at the moment)

- they agree my wife has always paid for her prescriptions,

which on the surface is great.

But if push comes to shove, would they actually put that in writing?

we are waiting on the Prescription Exemption Checking Service to get back to us and that's the reason I'm now looking around to see what I might need to do in case they just turn round and say No, pay up as a box has a tick in it?

Oh and one other thing

- the whole sorry saga is effecting my wife something rotten!

I had just got her to a place where she no longer needed the medication that they are now claiming she never paid for

- but because of their jumped up demand, she will now probably have to start all over again and here's the rub ..

. she's not going to get another prescription 'ever' if it causes this sort of trouble in her life!!!

Well, there you have it in a nutshell, so to speak. Over to you ...?

Well .... Jesus? I have to admit I'm overwhelmed by the number of views my post has generated but a little (OK a lot) underwhelmed by the lack of replies it's received!

Guess I'll go it alone then - boy is this world of the internet a lonely place .... at times.

Thanks one and all for your feedback ... I think. Hope the NHS Gestapo don't get you one day (?) ... however seeing how things are being run by that Hunt [silent C, miss the h] I've little doubt more of you will be in the firing line sooner rather than later, so watch your backs and your wallets/bank accounts.

Be seeing you.

The Tig

I think this so called service is in need of major reform,

I am in a similar situation due to my doctors and local chemist moving to digital everything

i no longer get to see any paperwork,

Because i am on income ESA I get free prescriptions

and since it a joint claim my wife is also entailed to them,

now we have over £800 in fines to pay because somebody has marked the wrong box electronically saying i have a tax credit card

and also according to the nhs database i am not claiming any other benefits,

and it all my fault because i didn't make sure it was right, it not the fault of anybody else.

Now i have to prove that the database the nhs hold is wrong ,

its not for them to prove me in the wrong as their database is infallible,

and if i dont pay by the end of november i will be in court.

Dear The Tig,

I hate to be so blunt but people who read your posts may not necessarily be the best people to answer them, and there’s nothing worse than a thread full of mournful platitudes about how terrible it must be, especially in just 14 hours between your op and proclamation of going it alone.

Unfortunately NHSBSA are seemingly in the midst of a crackdown and as you’ve undoubtedly seen by browsing the page yourself there are a few people in similar situations at the moment.

The truth is that in reality it seems you have two options,

either pay the fine or fight it and risk a court judgment if the magistrate finds that you did breach the terms of your agreement with the NHS.

Bookworm seems to have found some relevant information amongst the guidance and it may be worth having a read through their thread.

Dear The Tig, I hate to be so blunt but people who read your posts may not necessarily be the best people to answer them, and there’s nothing worse than a thread full of mournful platitudes about how terrible it must be, especially in just 14 hours between your op and proclamation of going it alone.

The forum has been experiencing some technical difficulties over the last couple of days. As a consequence, the OPs post along with many others, hasn't been as visible as it should have been. Hopefully, the people that have suffered similar issues and resolved them will be along to give some advice shortly.

Hi

IMO I would pay the fine and then Formal Complaint to your Doctors Surgery.

Question: I notice you mention this has happened since your doctors surgery went digital where your prescription is digitally sent to your pharmacy. When you collected the prescription and on the back of the prescription where you have to sign has the relevant boxes to tick, did you check these before signing for the prescription?

Now the reason I ask is my own doctors surgery went digital just over one year ago and when you do this digitally and it goes over to pharmacy for you to collect, when you then collect the prescription you still have to check the boxes on the back before signing for the prescription

Well, thanks for the feedback (yes you too 'think about it') but to be honest the internet is a gigantic place, filled with millions of people hence my surprise at the lack of at least one reply - even if it was (as so often the case) a negative one?

Ssome good news to report

- apart from the headache it gave me

I received a phone call late Friday afternoon from the Prescription Exemption Checking Service (boy did I fear the worst) who informed me that after looking into my replies that I sent in via their somewhat limited online contact form that we no longer needed pay the charge or fine. Result.

They accepted our explanation that a simple mistake had occurred (they must have had both my wife's scripts to hand as well as those of the person who's she also collected that does have a HC2 certificate) and on checking them used some common sense and deducted - 'hey, perhaps this dude is telling the truth'?

it's all sorted and we are now no longer liable for this penalty and now I've had an email confirming it, I'm happy to share.

One thing they did say to me was that when collecting ours or anyone else's prescriptions

we need to ensure the correct sections on the back of the script are completed before signing it and handing it back to the pharmacist ..

. that point they kept highlighting and

when I questioned them over this point and the one where we had got this last prescription from I got the impression that this case was not over and the Pharmacist was next in line for it!!!

What I've learnt from this short and nasty little experience is other then you feel totally alone, it pays to get straight on the case with the Prescription Exemption Checking Service .... in our case we know we always pay for our prescriptions and so we told them so and after putting it in writing - Case Closed.

If they now go after the Pharmacist - well they've more money then me and as I've found. It's a dog eat dog world!

Have a nice day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. The Tig

------------------------

Oh, to those that say Pay & complain .

... my motto is NEVER PAY,

as once you do 9 times out of 10 you'll never see your money back.

Plus if you do pay, most bullies, sorry business's/corporations etc ..

. see it as an admission of guilt.

Why would you pay unless you had too.

NO - don't pay, fight it Stand Up To Bullies

Wow...

Good news indeed.

Incidentally, Stu - as a PM I would have only referred back to the pharmacy and nhsbsa. Regardless of how the script got to it’s destination the responsibility to ensure it’s correctly processed and dispensed lies with both the pharmacy and the patient who needs to tick the appropriate box. However, the sooner NHS England catches up with the devolved nations and makes prescriptions free, the better. Here in sunny wales we don’t have the same issues and the NHSBSA only tend to chase dental patients when they’re not making our lives difficult in practice.

Ssome good news to report

[...]

it's all sorted and we are now no longer liable for this penalty and now I've had an email confirming it, I'm happy to share.

Good news indeed. Thanks for the update and I've edited the thread title to reflect the outcome.

Yes ... good news indeed and most definitely 'wow' given how some of the reported saga's on here have dragged on and on ... (now I've had time to read a few of them)!

The one thing I took from my particular encounter with this bunch of (to me) very amateurish individuals at the Prescription Exemption Checking Service is that they treat you as Guilty until proven otherwise .... whilst English Law is still based on the premise of ''innocent until proven guilty''?

The penalty charge letter we received simply stated 'you have committed said crime and are fined such & such accordingly' with no actual mechanics to answer their charge other than to pay their fine ... however in our case their 'charge and fine' proved incorrect hence their cancelling it.

Moral of my encounter with them ... don't give up, don't let the bar'stewards grind you down and if you've not committed a crime or what you did was just a simply mistake - human error then stand up for your rights and fight them. Initially you would hope common sense would kick in and you would not need to go through all this palava but then if they acted with common sense I'm guessing half the staff at the PECS would be out of a job?

Well this has been one experience I could have done without as too the wife. Next time we need anything from the chemist's I think I'll have to go - in case the PECS did turn their attention onto the pharmacist (guess they want their pound of flesh from somewhere eh?). And if there is any comeback ... I'll let you all know?

Keep your chins up and yes ... you can win against the establishment.

The Tig

The one thing I took from my particular encounter with this bunch of (to me) very amateurish individuals at the Prescription Exemption Checking Service is that they treat you as Guilty until proven otherwise .... whilst English Law is still based on the premise of ''innocent until proven guilty''?

This frequently gets “trotted out” for all sorts of situations, and your use of it shows you, too, have misunderstood or misapplied this legal maxim.

“Innocent until proven guilty” applies to criminal matters. This wasn’t a criminal matter in

If you had decided you didn’t want to appeal / challenge their decision, and paid the penalty : there was no finding of guilt, you wouldn’t have a criminal record.

They had assessed you had wrongly claimed and MIGHT be guilty of a criminal offence, not that you were guilty. That is a decision for a criminal court.

Innocent until proven guilty:

a) applies to criminal proceedings only (civil proceeding having a different ‘standard of proof’ to criminal proceedings, too

b) Also means that it is for the prosecution to prove their case, not for a defendant to disprove it. This means the prosecution must prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, both the actions and intent set out in law (statute or common / case law), or, for those offences set out as “strict liability” the actions only.

There was no prosecution here, so there was never ‘guilty’

Even if you’d paid a penalty : there was never a finding of “guilty”

They could only have been a finding of guilty if:

a) you said “take me to court, then,

b) it had gone to Court and

c) the defendant had been found guilty (by plea, or finding of the court after a not guilty plea).

Up until that point : someone is “innocent until proven guilty”

The maxim still holds, unaffected by what has happened to you.

Using the figure of speech that everyone know and understands - for one reason or another still applies here for the most basic of reason that this organisation is using the simple tactic of bullying you in to paying a fine/penalty charge or whatever you wish to call it, for whatever reason they seem fit without any open or clear recourse on your part.

In essence their letter to you, looking all official and formal implies you have broken some rule/law and as such are being penalised without any chance of defending yourself by way of their penalty.

As to your statement - you wouldn't have a criminal record ... we all know too well that organisations such as this simply turn to debt collection agency at the drop of a hat as soon as these charges are not paid to their time scale (and sometimes even when they are) and when you then chose to ignore or contest their accusations only to find extra fees are added for the privilege of the DCA involvement which if you don't pay or you fail to prove your case you'll probably end up being taken to court and end up with a CCJ against your name.

As for me ... I'm done - been a blast - end off ... have a nice day and good bye.

The Tig.

Nice deflection!

I note that you didn’t actually address the key point:

“Innocent until proven guilty” still stands, and was never imperilled by your misapplication of it.

Thread now closed.

Andy