> and may well have never been detected had she not come forward.
ouch
>There was one problem. She had spent close to £20,000 of it, and could not afford to pay it back immediately.
So it wasn’t HMRC’s mistake that caused all the trouble then.
>“We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to the individual. We are working to recover the payment that was made. For the amount that the individual spent, we will work with them to come to a payment arrangement that takes into account their financial circumstances,” he said.
Hopefully everything gets sorted out then. Nice of HMRC to not drag her to court.
I work in tax and had a case where HMRC accidentally added a zero onto a client’s already large tax payment by cheque, leaving after the genuine liability had been taken a cool quarter of a million pounds just sitting on their HMRC account, available to be repaid into a bank account. Naturally, we called HMRC up and got it straightened out. Actually having the money transferred into your account is a step further, I guess.
You get the feeling from the article that she didn’t try too hard initially to get it sorted. Did she really never have more than half-an-hour to make a call? Or just leave it on speaker phone while she was cooking something for her kid? Seems HMRC are playing softball anyhow, since I suppose it originally was their cock up and she did, eventually, come forward about it.
“I even tried to ring HMRC but getting hold of anyone at the time was impossible. I’d wait 30 minutes on the phone and then would have to give up as my child would need to be fed, or something.”
“Or something”…seems legit
The core part of this story that will likely get overlooked is the fact that the person tried to contact HMRC multiple times, and usually gave up after 30 minutes.
This isn’t just an problem with HMRC, but all government/council/public service departments that I have had to deal with (with the exception of one) when trying to deal with an issue.
Public services seem to be continually swamped (this is prior to Covid), and there seems little will to overhaul the system and/or repair the underlying causes
Lol, this woman is the fault of her issues. She spent money she knew wasn’t hers, and £20,000 at that. The phone excuse is pitiful. I had my phone on hold from 8an until about 2.30pm, had one headphone in my ear all day as I worked. It’s not hard to stay on hold.
[deleted]
‘But I did try calling multiple times over 15 months…’
Yeah right…
I’m sure if she headed to twitter – @HMRCcustomers – and tweeted;
“Hey @HMRCcustomers, can I keep the £775k you paid into my bank account by mistake?”
Somebody would have been in touch the same day without the need to “try” calling multiple times…
The other story linked about the guy who received £193k he didn’t expect, then proceeded to pay off credit cards and buy premium bonds to make up the money…
*Easy to say we’d all be honest, but when that sort of money shows up in your bank account, difficult to say how we’d react.*
Hmm…
Yes, so you spent money instead of checking the source of this suddon windfall.
The bank and HMRC are rather not people to be on the end of their ire.
Take money, put in savings accnt, wait for the call from hmrc and still be in profit at the end.
Can’t believe that people think they are entitled to money mistakenly sent to them.
Like do you really think you’d knowingly be given £775k from the gov for free, no questions asked with a note saying ‘have a nice life’. This woman is idiotic.
11 comments
> and may well have never been detected had she not come forward.
ouch
>There was one problem. She had spent close to £20,000 of it, and could not afford to pay it back immediately.
So it wasn’t HMRC’s mistake that caused all the trouble then.
>“We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to the individual. We are working to recover the payment that was made. For the amount that the individual spent, we will work with them to come to a payment arrangement that takes into account their financial circumstances,” he said.
Hopefully everything gets sorted out then. Nice of HMRC to not drag her to court.
I work in tax and had a case where HMRC accidentally added a zero onto a client’s already large tax payment by cheque, leaving after the genuine liability had been taken a cool quarter of a million pounds just sitting on their HMRC account, available to be repaid into a bank account. Naturally, we called HMRC up and got it straightened out. Actually having the money transferred into your account is a step further, I guess.
You get the feeling from the article that she didn’t try too hard initially to get it sorted. Did she really never have more than half-an-hour to make a call? Or just leave it on speaker phone while she was cooking something for her kid? Seems HMRC are playing softball anyhow, since I suppose it originally was their cock up and she did, eventually, come forward about it.
“I even tried to ring HMRC but getting hold of anyone at the time was impossible. I’d wait 30 minutes on the phone and then would have to give up as my child would need to be fed, or something.”
“Or something”…seems legit
The core part of this story that will likely get overlooked is the fact that the person tried to contact HMRC multiple times, and usually gave up after 30 minutes.
This isn’t just an problem with HMRC, but all government/council/public service departments that I have had to deal with (with the exception of one) when trying to deal with an issue.
Public services seem to be continually swamped (this is prior to Covid), and there seems little will to overhaul the system and/or repair the underlying causes
Lol, this woman is the fault of her issues. She spent money she knew wasn’t hers, and £20,000 at that. The phone excuse is pitiful. I had my phone on hold from 8an until about 2.30pm, had one headphone in my ear all day as I worked. It’s not hard to stay on hold.
[deleted]
‘But I did try calling multiple times over 15 months…’
Yeah right…
I’m sure if she headed to twitter – @HMRCcustomers – and tweeted;
“Hey @HMRCcustomers, can I keep the £775k you paid into my bank account by mistake?”
Somebody would have been in touch the same day without the need to “try” calling multiple times…
The other story linked about the guy who received £193k he didn’t expect, then proceeded to pay off credit cards and buy premium bonds to make up the money…
*Easy to say we’d all be honest, but when that sort of money shows up in your bank account, difficult to say how we’d react.*
Hmm…
Yes, so you spent money instead of checking the source of this suddon windfall.
The bank and HMRC are rather not people to be on the end of their ire.
Take money, put in savings accnt, wait for the call from hmrc and still be in profit at the end.
Can’t believe that people think they are entitled to money mistakenly sent to them.
Like do you really think you’d knowingly be given £775k from the gov for free, no questions asked with a note saying ‘have a nice life’. This woman is idiotic.