Centrelink Wrong Payment Received 46 K

My wife coiple days ago she received a notification from centrelink she going to received an amount of 46k in the her bank account in a couple days and a $500 fortnightly payment.

My wife straight away call centrelink and after over 1 hr wait in line she explain the situation the money she going to received is not her money and sent wrongly on the her bank account, they tell her to download a special form to fill em up and bring to centrelink, she did and explain to them we don't want that money bcs they cause problems to us. She brought the form and they tell to my wife they have to do the investigation and the money they already on the way, they cause a prolem to us, bcs they show to us all this amount of money in the bank account.

In this situation what we can do, creating us stress of the situation, wasting time to us for their mistake, would you think we can et any compensation of the distress they cause to us?

What you think?

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Comments

  • +3

    Sounds like the hallmarks of a scam.

  • +2

    You don’t get compensation. Be an adult.

  • Could it be a payment for flood damage?

  • So side question, who the hell CL was trying to pay in the first place and for what? $46k from a welfare organisation is really a lot!

    • Must be the quarterly bonus to a staff member

      • +1

        Even the decent places to work in the public sector don't pay bonuses

      • +2

        yeah, incentive bonus for meeting the quota for denying applications…
        "So who told you that mate?" - see: Garn: Every Centrelink worker ever

      • Must be for Cartier watches

  • Keep it and pay minimum $40 repayment a month.

  • +1

    Sounds great - the bozos gave you free money!

    • -2

      Sounds great appalling - the bozos gave you free taxpayers money!

  • Dont spend but Put in offset or high savings account

  • +1

    "would you think we can et any compensation of the distress they cause to us?"

    Yes, for sure.

    You can claim $46k.

  • +3

    How on earth does one receive $46 K from Centrelink?? We truly are the lucky country, no wonder the USA is selling us overpriced submarines.

    • Soon we will be spending trillions more on obsolete weapons etc, while our capital cities start to look like the streets of LA and Chicago

      • We won't end up like Chicago, since people can't just import guns from interstate…

    • +1

      This amount can easily be the outcome of an appeal which meant back pay from the date of application. Its not uncommon for these things to take..well a LONG time

      This means for that entire time the person has been without the money they were entitled to

  • :D

  • +1

    You can transfer it to me.

  • Sounds like a scam, but had I received a payment like that I would not have lifted a finger to send it back. I would not spend it, but would milk the interest for as long as it takes them to reverse it.

    • Send an email to their support email address and then transfer it to the HISA for "safety" reasons. By the time they get back to him, he might have accrued $3000 in interest :)

  • +1

    I knew a guy in Canada once got $50k by mistake from their centrelink equivalent 20+ years ago. He took the money and ran back to the place he was born and set up a new life there, pretty much giving up his citizenship. Apparently he was doing alright last time I saw him.

    • What a scoundrel!

    • +4

      for 50k? You can work a year and make that…. Now if it was 500k or 5 mill that would be more worth it. But giving up your citizenship for a measly 50k sounds like a raw deal.

      • +1
        1. It was 20 years ago.
        2. Canadian dollars.
        3. You can make $50k a year but you probably have to spend at least 30 grand.
        4. $50k in a poor country can be great money if invested correctly.
        5. I hated the cold and was already homesick.
      • $50k or the right to live in the a first world country where you can be frozen to death 9 out of 12 months a year is debatable (but I heard you only paid 3c/kwh so it's not that bad). But back then $50k could buy you one third of a house in Canada or 2 houses in where he moved to. Now house prices are probably equal so it's not a bad deal if you know how to manage your money I guess.

  • +3

    Sounds like a scam. Pretending to be centrelink and give a number or link to another website that looks like centrelink. Then when u talk to them. They tell u to refund your real money back to them, whereas they will show u a fake one to u.

    • Hopefully OP doesn’t even have 4.6k to give them!

  • The government can send me $46k to marinate in my offset account while they figure out how to get it back.
    I won't try asking for compensation for the "distress" of it.

  • +9

    Sounds like a common scam. It's not centrelink giving you the money. In fact, nobody will give you any money but someone is going to ask you for it. Just be careful not to transfer any money to anybody, no matter what.

    Centrelink knows how to take it back from your account if it was really really them, but somehow I suspect it's got nothing to do with centrelink.

  • a system limitation prevents payments of $20,000 or more for jobseeker (slightly different for other income support) so if there is an error with the amount it will probably get picked up. Otherwise they will ask you for it back or request the bank to refund it.

  • If you receive any notice via SMS or email, log onto MyGov and check that inbox. If it's not in the myGov inbox chances are it's a scam.

  • Centrelink has a high rate of new staff, so its not impossible that someone has stuffed up and backdated a long forgotten payment application.

    Theres a small chance It could be something fraudulent, someone using your identity to make claims etc. If youre concerned , a password change of your mygov accounts would help.You can also request a verbal password on your centrelink account.

    If the payment actually passes and makes it to your account then it’ll take between a week and a month for them to sort out a request for the bank to reverse it.

    Everything will be done between them and the bank. There won’t be any compensation.

  • Owing 46 K to Centrelink is just so passé… lol

  • Why the heck would you wait on the phone? Send them a letter, upload into the system. Job done

  • Just to know, can I have a centrelink account if I haven't dealt with them ? Only time I went there is to get enrolled to Medicare.

    • +1

      No
      You'll need to create a centrelink account to obtain your unique customer reference number.
      Then sit back and wait for the 46k notification.

  • How did you get the notification, could it be a scam at all?

  • By now OP realized this is a scam right? And the money will never be in her account unless you have to pay some “withdrawal fees”

  • +1

    What's the point of contacting centrelink of a notification?

    I get scam notifications all the time and just ignore them. If you do get the money in the bank account, then that's when you take action and call centrelink.

    You guys are stressing for nothing, I would stress if it was a notification I OWE centrelink 46k then I would go into mygov and check any official letters.

  • I wouldnt be stressed about $46grand dumped in my account??

    Why is the op so worried about it, seems like a guilty conscious to me like there is more to the story.

    hmmm makes more sense that this might just be a scam.

    • Cynic!

      I must admit I too feel there's a 'supplementary' part of this story missing. (Maybe the fear of 'discovery'?) because>
      " they have to do the investigation"

      Hopefully CL gets to the bottom of it.I doubt we'll be seeing any gaps filled here, by the OP.

  • Wow…i never realised there was such honest people in the world. I would have kept quite about it to see how long it would take centrelink to realise what they have done and pocket the offset savings in the meantime.

    • Seems they just want to be a victim…… "sigh"

      None of the story make much sense like I said.

    • +1

      It was a notification, they didn't get any money…. yet

      Most likely a spam scam notification

  • High interest savings account and wait till they ask for it back

    • $190 a month ain't 2 bad, especially if they are slow to ask for it back

  • +1

    Sounds like a scam to me…

  • Sadly it's very unlikely OP give us a follow up or explanation for this.

  • Interesting that this story came out where 46k was claimed after a mygov hack:
    https://www.9news.com.au/national/mygov-hack-melbourne-woman…

    Very similar story and I think the OP should not be dismissing that this money is likely not going to them.

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