When I turned 25, I developed quite bad hip pain. It made working difficult due to the pain, so I had to drop my hours and I was on pain killers daily. I went to Centrelink to help supplement my income as I was on an extensive waiting list for medical treatment/surgery but couldn't get disability, so was put on Newstart.
During the period I supposedly claimed incorrectly, I had 4 different employers, three of which overlapped, the fourth one I'm still employed at.
Refusing to pay their so-called "debt", I did what I had to. I jumped through all the hoops, I filled out their online assessment, tracking down 4-5 year old payslips and scouring through bank statements for the wages that I couldn't get payslips for (two of the businesses switched accounting systems and didn't have all their records). I carefully input each figure, double- and triple-checking each number.
I won.
I received two letters. The first (early Dec 2016) said that due to my self-assessment, the debt had gone from $627.34 to $688.28. I actually don't remember receiving this at all. I don't think I'd even opened the email until today.
The second one (dated the next day) - said, "Thank you for completing an online reassessment and providing the required documentation. We have considered the information you provided and decided to change our original decision. This means that you owe $0.00."
I was so relieved. This whole thing had been going on for two months and finally I was free, my character exonerated, the "debt" nullified.
Up till today, I thought that was the end of it. Then this afternoon (early Oct 2017), at approx 1pm, I received a phone call from a C'link person to discuss payment options for my debt. I told him he had the wrong person and when he insisted that he did, I hung up on him, sure it was a scam.
Despite this, I checked my MyGov email and there, dated August 2017 was a letter saying, "Recently you were told that you had been overpaid an amount and needed to repay it." NO-ONE has contacted me in between the letter in Dec '16 and Aug '17. I have not had a single correspondence with C'link since the letter saying that I owed nothing.
I tried to resolve the issue this afternoon after work, printing out copies of all the emails covering the whole Robo-debt bull-crap and taking them down to the local office. The lady I spoke with referred me to the Compliance office, sat me in a conference room and let me call them from there. It was like bashing my head against a brick wall.
Despite have physical evidence (and them having a matching copy of that letter on file) apparently I still owe the money.
She mentioned that some $0.00 letters were sent out incorrectly and people were called and informed of such an error, but I certainly wasn't. I was a wreck over the phone; by turns calm, angry and crying and they wouldn't budge on the issue, wouldn't acknowledge that the letter I'd received was correct. She tried to say that the most recent letter would outdate that one, but it doesn't give any indication of any debt beyond saying that I'd been contacted about it. I've received no new Account Payable letter and until today, no C'link officer had made any attempt to contact me.
She kept telling me that the debt's not going to go away, that the only way they'll review it is if I provide more evidence.
I feel like I'm back where I was, almost a year ago. It's triggered my anxiety again and I feel like I'm going to be consumed by this. I feel like there's no possible chance of this ending with a positive outcome and I hate feeling so helpless, alone, unheard and misrepresented. I am not a dole cheat. I work, I pay my taxes and I contribute to society and yet I'm being stung by this bull-shit clerical error and they won't listen to reason and they won't stop hounding me over this or holding it over my head and they won't admit that they're wrong.
They have not handled this well at all.
When so many complaints were made about the system, when it was clear that it didn't work, that should have been the end of it. They should have issued a nationwide apology, owned the mistake and nullified all debts which appeared under the system.
Instead they continue to harass people on the basis of some bullshit maths that doesn't work in the real world where not every paycheck is a steady one.
They're oppressing their people who were (or are) on C'link because at one point they required financial assistance.
They should be chasing the tax frauds, not the people who are just trying to do the right thing and work within their convoluted, broken machine.