It has used up time and energy that took away from my current employment and social life. I had to go through the reporting process twice and there was no explanation about how the supposed debt was incurred so I felt like I'd done something wrong when I hadn't.
Terribly. The calculations they used was to obtain tax records and work out the debt from there. They did not take into account the time period that people were receiving government payments. I had to report twice because of an administration error, where the Centrelink officer failed to record my first income reporting. I didn't find this out until 6 months later when I got a call out of the blue saying Centrelink still hadn't received my income report. Only then did I manage to get out of them how they'd calculated the debt, which was unethical and completely inaccurate. My debt went from $1900 to $240 and the ordeal took 2 years. Imagine how much this supposed debt recovery has cost them in staffing and administrative costs and time! I'm still not convinced that the debt amount is accurate given the blunders that have occurred up until this point but the letters threaten interest racking up if I don't pay, so they win I guess.