I did not actually get a robo debt but they sent me a letter saying I might have been over paid which immidately caused me a huge amount of anxiety as I find them hard to deal with at the best of times. I have anxiety and depression but I knew that I tried by best every fortnight to do the right thing.
They insisted I go back to every employer of the last years and get all my old payslips. I had to spend many days and hours emailing and contacting people to try to get all the stuff.
Then when I had it I got a phone call from one of them. The entire phone call they treated me as dirt. Like I was someone trying to do the wrong thing.
I tried to remain calm and just go through the information week by week but I was getting very upset how they were treating me.
I told them I was sorry that this was making me anxious on one of the calls and the person replied to, "Well if you didn't do anything wrong you'd have nothing to be anxious about then would you?"
I tried to ask them please tell me if there is a discrepancy what is the discrepancy, when was it and for how much is it?
They said, no we do not tell you you tell us!
I just kept saying I didn't think there should be a discrepancy because I had tried my best each fortnight to report correctly and tried to double check everything each time so if there was discrepancy then it really should not be for much.
They would reply with nasty comments like, "so you're saying there IS a discrepancy then."
All I could say was I wouldn't have thought so if there was it was not intentional.
So then fortnight by fortnight I went through years and years of this person treating me as dirt as though any minute they would catch me out and I was very worried thinking "Oh no...what if I have made a mistake and didn't realise?"
Then finally at the very end they said," Oh yeah actually you don't owe anything.
Then they just hung up, no apology, nothing.
They treated me as dirt.