I felt severely depressed, pillaged and taken advantage of

Debt amount:

$990

Date debt issued:

Monday, 11 September 2017

Period debt occurred:

September 2011 to February 2013

Has your case been referred to a collection agency?:

Payment Type:

Newstart Allowance

Appealing Debt?:

Unknown

Tell us about your debt and how has this affected you? e.g. anxiety levels, financial and accommodation stress:

I felt severely depressed, pillaged and taken advantage of. I feel more sorry for the poor people who were hit with over 10k.

How do you feel about the way the Government has handled this process?:

I told them that you can't just say to someone that they owe money from 8 years ago and that they have to prove that they don't. I demanded their calculations. I then got my bank details from back then to compare and my suspicions were right, every earnings figure was grossly overstated (eg. saying I earned $1174 in a certain week when it was actually $293) which was then used to calculated the amount overpaid. And in some cases even the amount of benefits paid to me in a certain fortnight were false eg. $480 when bank statement proves $407 which was also used in the overpayment calculation. The review officers are also blood thirsty and just want to give the debt even after telling them your bank statements prove otherwise. They are all trained to be money hungry communist robots and not to take no for an answer. The computer program used is called MultiCal - Centrelink debt calculator.