Back in 2012 I worked for a major Australian employer and was terminated due to illness. It was an extremely traumatic period of my life. Fortunately I was able to receive sickness allowance from Centrelink. This helped me stay afloat while I rehabilitated myself. I believe this is the point of social welfare.
Centrelink recently sent me several letters via my MyGov account. It's not something I check so I didn't know about them, my bad. Next thing I know I received a paper letter from Dunn & Bradstreet saying I owe $5426. I was blindsided. I was always meticulous in reporting any income to Centrelink; ethically I'd never manipulate the system. At that point I didn't know there was any media around these supposed debts so I was frantic - I was required to pay the entire amount immediately. What?!
When I called Dunn & Bradstreet I agreed to pay $500 towards the debt and a fortnightly amount of $100 after that. I had no idea what was the best thing to do - now I wish I hadn't paid anything. The woman was very vague about the nature of the problem and of course pushy. I was in the process of applying for a new apartment at the time and was very worried about my credit rating.
I then spent over an hour on the phone (at work) trying to get through to Centrelink only to be told I should have called their debt recovery line first. I did this and the woman explained to me I most likely didn't owe anything at all as the ATO and Centrelink data reconciliation didn't take into account the dates my income was earned. I was told I needed to go online and enter my income / dates, however there was no option for me to do this when I tried.
In order to do this I'd retrieved my pay information for the required period from my former employer. This wasn't pleasant as it was a bad time in my life I've long since put behind me (I haven't received Centrelink payments for years). It appeared to indeed be a problem with dates. I earned a certain amount between July and October, then nothing for the rest of the financial year. Centrelink averaged the total amount of the full financial year and assumed I'd lied. All the money was earned before I'd even applied for the allowance!
I phoned Centrelink again and spoke to an extremely helpful man and we went through every amount earned for the period, to the cent. There was some confusion about but eventually we realised my paid out holiday leave was counted in my ATO declared income whereas my ETP was not. We were both relieved when things added up to within $2 or so. This took us about an hour to sort through. I'm sure he has better things to do, as do I.
However - this was before Christmas and I still haven't heard anything back from Centrelink. I'm now confident I don't owe a cent and I have no idea how to get my $500 back. I was told by Centrelink staff things were fine and I'd get the money back, but not how this would happen. I'm not sure what to do next - things don't look promising based on what I've been reading.
I can't say directly how it has affected me in terms of stress and anxiety, though I can say with certainty it hasn't helped. It added unnecessary strain during the Christmas period, moving house and a sinus infection that won't go away. The issue remains unresolved and I'm still sick and could do without it hanging over my head. It's also very inconvenient to resolve these things when you work 9-5 and can't be on the phone for non-work matters for such long periods of time.
They don't seem to be handling it at all. Nobody is sure what to do by the sounds of things.
It's counterproductive to rely on an algorithm that only averages wages over a full year. Some people earned money intermittently, and some (like me) earned the entire amount before they even filled in a Centrelink form! A simple reconciliation of dates shows this, and if the algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to do this, it should certainly be checked manually before debts are issued. I also can't believe I didn't even receive a single phone call from Centrelink before they referred me to Dunn & Bradstreet! Complete debacle.