Customer Compliance?

Hi all,

I posted only 2 months ago about how happy I was to have been placed straight into the support group without a medical.

Today I received a letter from a customer compliance officer inviting me to an office interview.

I am really worried now as I am not sure why customer compliance would want to see me.

It is like they just want to make things as hard as they can in the hope that people will just give up on there claims and go away.

Any help or words of encouragement would be gratefully appreciated at this very worrying time.

Take care,

Keith

They've probably got their own records wrong, and want to know why you haven't turned up to a WFI.

Of course, since you are in SG you don't have to go to WFIs, but if their forms haven't caught up with the SG designation yet, they won't know that.

There is one less pleasant scenario which I think you should prepare yourself for - it happened to me when I got one of those letters.

I rang the Job Centre (who monitored this sort of thing then), basically to see if I was being accused of fraud, and if so whether I needed a solicitor with me. I was told that someone had reported me anonymously as doing work whilst receiving an out of work benefit.

Now I should probably have said, "Thank you for the information, I will attend the interview," and then rung off refusing to say anything further. What you say is probably recorded and can certainly be used against you. A solicitor would advise you - under those circumstances - to say nothing more.

I knew that and, when pressed by the official, talked anyway. I was lucky in that the person I talked to quite clearly had a strong distaste for the "shop a neighbour" approach.

He told me the information they had been given. I told him those facts which I knew were "in the public domain" and he believed my explanation, and agreed the matter should be dropped then and there. I did remember to ask for written confirmation of that. I was probably very lucky.

The best course of action might be to see if they will tell you what it's about, but refuse absolutely to give any information over the phone (where you have no record of exactly what is said).

Having thoroughly alarmed you with the less likely option I'll repeat my earlier point.

It's probably just a bureaucratic snafu.

When I wrote the material I have just posted, I had not seen Gordon's post - which accounts for the redundancy in the information.

I don't think there's much contradiction there.

It makes me sick to my stomach to think that a neighbour of mins may have "shopped" me for some spiteful and unfounded reason.

I am hoping it is just an error on there part but still it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

KeithW wrote:

Hi all,

I posted only 2 months ago about how happy I was to have been placed straight into the support group without a medical.

Today I received a letter from a customer compliance officer inviting me to an office interview.

I am really worried now as I am not sure why customer compliance would want to see me.

It is like they just want to make things as hard as they can in the hope that people will just give up on there claims and go away.

Any help or words of encouragement would be gratefully appreciated at this very worrying time.

Take care,

Keith

Hi Keith,

All forum posts on Customer Compliance can be found here Customer Compliance

Achieved using the 'search forum' facility.

As you'll read Customer Compliance Officers often call to check the claimant is claiming the right benefits and/or getting the correct rates and often result in a benefit increase.

Hope this helps.

Jim ( now back from holiday)