Centrelink wrongly hits 70,000 families with bills for up to $726

Date: January 7, 2016

(29)
Comments 135

Noel Towell

Reporter for The Canberra Times

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Centrelink apologises over debt glitch

A computer glitch has been blamed after 73,000 families were incorrectly hit with bills of up to $800 each. Courtesy Seven News Melbourne.

PT1M32S 620 349

Centrelink had a Christmas surprise for tens of thousands of families: bills for hundreds of dollars they did not owe.

A computer glitch is being blamed after 73,000 families who are paid family tax benefit were told they were due to pay back up to $800 each.

Centrelink has blamed a computer glitch for the incorrect bills. Photo: Marina Neil

Centrelink has said sorry to its customers, the second mass apology the agency has had to issue in recent months.

In November and December, clients suffered through weeks of disruption to the Centrelink websites used by millions of Australians to manage their payments and report their work activities.

The agency was forced to apologise after weeks of "intermittent issues" left many clients unable to log on to their accounts.

The department was savaged in a mid-year National Audit Office report for its customer service performance and and Fairfax revealed last month that the Commonwealth Ombudsman was fielding complaints about Centrelink at an average rate of 660 a month.

Centrelink's tech troubles have also hit efforts to crack down on dodgy disability benefits claims with doctors unable to lodge their reports on the agency's malfunctioning web portal.

A centrelink spokeswoman said on Thursday that the false debts raised with the family tax benefit clients had been fixed and nobody had been left out of pocket.

"We are aware a small proportion of Family Tax Benefit customers, 73,000 or less than 5 per cent of total FTB customers, temporarily had an incorrect debt displaying in their online accounts or the Express Plus app," she said.

"This incorrect debt display has now been fixed and is no longer showing in customer's accounts.

"We apologise for any inconvenience and can reassure this did not have any financial impact on customers. "

135 comments so far

And we expect Mr Turnbull to provide a national broadband network as well!!!!!!!

Commenter

terry

Date and time

January 07, 2016, 6:16PM
- Yep, exposing one big mob of incompetent fools due to the mass sackings of the PS..
  Let's Kick This Mob Out
  
  Commenter
  
  A country gal
  
  Date and time
  
  January 07, 2016, 10:56PM
- Terry, don't expect the 'new fella' to achieve anything, to date, he's done nothing but put things on a table somewhere within Australia, and waffled on considerably about anything and everything, but again achieved nothing.
  Lost a couple of Ministers and should have lost a third one also.
  He needs to look seriously at Centrelink and increase both funding and staffing levels to try and get them back to some type of normality, but going by his Super Duper N.B.N. he'll most probably put it on the table also.
  
  Commenter
  
  DukeofWoyWoy
  
  Date and time
  
  January 08, 2016, 11:04AM
just heard on prime time news Centrelink have been gifted 1 billion bucks to overhaul there system, crikey!!! that's one expensive front-end

Commenter

rogue

Date and time

January 07, 2016, 6:29PM
- If there are a million recipients, it is $1,000 per client, assuming that the system comes in under budget and ignoring operating costs.
  But billion dollar IT projects often fail to deliver anything at all (Qld health). It should be broken down into a number of much smaller projects that are not integrated.
  
  Commenter
  
  T
  
  Date and time
  
  January 08, 2016, 11:35AM
- Yeah Accidenture got it because of their apparent SAP implementation skillz. Watch this space.
  
  Commenter
  
  Jezza
  
  Date and time
  
  January 10, 2016, 2:29PM
I was forced to migrate my Centrelink, Medibank and Tax accounts to their MyGov portal so they could be linked together. Now however, every time I sign in, I find that one of these accounts has de-linked itself, and I am forced to reset all of them just so I can access one. When I've rung up to try and get it fixed, the attitude seems to be "it happens a lot". Why are we forced into something that doesn't work?

Commenter

Brian

Location

Kensington

Date and time

January 07, 2016, 7:29PM
- Because this is the Brave New World where we will do what we are told, whether it works or not. What did Australians expect when they elected Tony Abbot et al?
  
  Commenter
  
  Suzanna
  
  Date and time
  
  January 08, 2016, 7:40AM
- This goes back to John Howard.
  
  Commenter
  
  Di Keller
  
  Date and time
  
  January 08, 2016, 9:05AM
- You are on Centrelink payments but can afford to have private health insurance with Medibank, that seems a little strange to me.
  
  Commenter
  
  Dave
  
  Location
  
  Coogee
  
  Date and time
  
  January 12, 2016, 12:55PM

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