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Phone tag.
Nov. 2nd, 2002 01:20 amSpent most of afternoon playing aforementioned game with Centrelink (social security people), after being told was as rich as Kerry Packer and hence entitled to bugger-all assistance while family of three surviving on scholarship money.
Discover source of problem. When reporting assets, listed some shares with W-- Trust, which provide small but welcome supplement to income. Listed (correct) ASX code for said shares.
Apparently, when Centrelink staff entered these details, system claimed no such company exists. (Went to ASX website and entered code myself, confirmed that it was correct.)
So, Centrelink person assumed I must have meant W-- Holdings, and calculated value of shares accordingly.
Result: shares overvalued by $113,000. Offer to sell said shares to Centrelink at their valuation, with view to paying off mortgage and going on big holiday. Alas, offer declined. Jackie at Centrelink is very nice and does her best to help, but ultimately is not in position to wrangle with buggy software, so passes the problem upstream. Since is now late Friday afternoon, that's it until next week.
It's not like we're going to starve while we get this sorted out, but it does bug me that a federal agency, a large part of whose job is calculating people's assets, is using software that is apparently capable of losing quite large companies. And that the error-handling process apparently involves guessing at what the correct details might have been, without contacting us to CHECK their guesses.
Discover source of problem. When reporting assets, listed some shares with W-- Trust, which provide small but welcome supplement to income. Listed (correct) ASX code for said shares.
Apparently, when Centrelink staff entered these details, system claimed no such company exists. (Went to ASX website and entered code myself, confirmed that it was correct.)
So, Centrelink person assumed I must have meant W-- Holdings, and calculated value of shares accordingly.
Result: shares overvalued by $113,000. Offer to sell said shares to Centrelink at their valuation, with view to paying off mortgage and going on big holiday. Alas, offer declined. Jackie at Centrelink is very nice and does her best to help, but ultimately is not in position to wrangle with buggy software, so passes the problem upstream. Since is now late Friday afternoon, that's it until next week.
It's not like we're going to starve while we get this sorted out, but it does bug me that a federal agency, a large part of whose job is calculating people's assets, is using software that is apparently capable of losing quite large companies. And that the error-handling process apparently involves guessing at what the correct details might have been, without contacting us to CHECK their guesses.
