Confused about how I owe UC £1800

penpo

Hi can anyone enlighten me on how Uc have emailed a pdf letter to me today stating we owe them over £1800 for over payments we received from them starting from June 2020 to October 2021 when we didnt start claiming until August 2020 and in that time period only received just over £1200 from them ??? I was fobbed off by UC when I rang saying I had to speak to their debt management department to find out what was going on they told me they don't have that information & to go back to UC.

    Thank you for any help someone may have 

poppy123456

You will need to contact UC or put a message on your journal under the payment section and ask them.

calcotti

Debt management only have information on what debt they have been instructed to recover. They don't know what causes the debt.

To find out how the debt has (allegedly) arise you will, as poppy says, have to find out from UC. You should ask them for a complete breakdown. If you need help see if a local advice agency can support you, https://advicelocal.uk

Tori_Scope

Hi @penpo I can imagine that'd be really worrying to receive! I hope that you're able to get through to them today to find out why this has happened.

Did you manage to get some sleep last night? I can see that you were up late last night.

penpo

hi thank you for your concern i got in touch with uc this morning where the operator told me i had to check my bank statements from june 2020 to october 2021 and see they made bigger payments than what they had put on the payment journal thing, i asked how this could happen and what can i do she started telling me what to write re mandatory reconsideration and then decided to not speak anymore i kept saying hello are you going to talk to me i can hear your there as you are clearing your throat i did not swear or get rude she just refused to speak anymore so i informed her i was writing it all down on my journal that she wont speak so in the end i said either speak to me or terminate the call where she did just that terminated the call am now awaiting for someone from UC to call me. i am shocked at after over a year they just send a pdf document telling you you owe them £1800 due to over payments they have paid with no explanation no apologies nothing. will let you know what happens next.  Again thank you Tori

janer1967

Hi  I totally understand your frustration and agree you should have a full explanation of where the overpayment has occurred 

Unfortunately with uc one of the terms is that any overpayment is recovered even if it is their error 

calcotti

I wonder if they have just recalculated your entitlement and put new statements on your journal. Unfortunately when new statements are added they remove the older versions. I suggest you go through all of the statements you can see to see if the calculations look right. You may also want to specifically ask if there are earlier versions of the statements and if so ask them to provide them to you. Then you can compare the different versions.

Obviously that may not apply - it might just be a c***up.

If you get no help you may need to request Subject Access Record to get all the details on your claim.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/request-your-personal-information-from-the-department-for-work-and-pensions

Unfortunately, as janer says, any UC overpayment is recoverable regardless of the reason but I would certainly want to check whether or no an overpayment has actually occurred.

penpo

hi thank you all for your help, i have been in touch with national.debtline.org who i would advise anyone with this kind of thing to do, they have explained and given the fact sheet for overpayment under universal credit for me to show how to deal with it along with the mandotory reconsideration, also the complaints procedure for the operator who refused to talk to me but stayed on the phone clearing her throat every now and again.  this was at 08.05 this morning and still no one has come back to me at all.  dont get me wrong  i totally accept if your overpaid there is an argument to payback but when you have no knowledge of it and then suddenly get a pdf letter stating you owe £1800 with no explanation for payments over a year ago, i find it very difficult to see how dwp or anyone else can do this especially with how they have done it knowing full well my partner's mental and medical health is so bad, and knowing i too am on antidepressants with back problems and arthiritis in my neck.  so at present i have notified UC re complaint to dwp complaints procedure regarding their operator and doing the reconsideration requesting for no deductions to be made until this dispute is looked into, with acceptable reasons for the delay and the way the information was sent out.  fingers crossed

Tori_Scope

I'm glad you've been able to get some support on this @penpo!