Expensive Mistakescoopsweb asks "What's the most expensive mistake you've ever made? Should I mention a certain employee who caused 4 hours worth of delays in Central London and got his company fined £500k?"
No points for stories about the time you had a few and thought it'd be a good idea to wrap your car around a bollard. Or replies consisting of "my wife".
(
chthonic, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 11:26)
« Go Back
Civil Service Boo BoosMany years ago before the scaredy-cat litter expanded to three I worked as checking officer on a Sickness Benefit Section. As part of this a customer's National Insurance Number would come up as a random check. Anyway Mr X's National Insurance Number came up. The purpose of this was to make sure that the right money is paid to the correct person at the correct time.
Go and get his papers and call up his account on our antiquated computer system and start going through everything. Yes we're paying for him, his wife and numerous children and at this point I think we were even contributing to his mortgage - his order book was at the correct rate and at the correct post office.
Then get to the Contribution Conditions (to get the money you had to have paid the two full tax years prior to your claim). Oops, didn't satisfy - even said at the bottom DOES NOT SATISFY. Result £24,000 overpayment written off due to official errorand the customer shunted to Income Support. The same person hade made several other mistakes such as this and they were all written off. How nice are we? Much better than the Inland Revenue who had their law written so that they can recover any overpayment regardless of whose fault it is (and it's usually theirs as they employed numpties straight off the street to sort out Tax Credits for those in a financially tough situation).
(, Sat 27 Oct 2007, 20:21, Reply)
« Go Back