Since May, the Department for Work and Pensions has been forcing me to make monthly repayments of £50 towards a £763 debt I never incurred — a fraudulent Universal Credit advance claimed in my name by criminals.
Despite evidence proving my innocence, the DWP has treated me as guilty. Please help.
M.B., Birmingham.
Sally Hamilton replies: You described to me how you were landed in a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions, similar to characters caught in webs of pointless and complex bureaucracy in the stories of author Franz Kafka.
I can see why you felt that way.
You have been trying to clear your name since October 2024, when you realised your identity had been hijacked to submit multiple Universal Credit (UC) applications in 2023. Universal Credit is a state benefit to help those on low incomes with living costs.
Identity theft: A reader is being billed £763 by the Department for Work and Pensions after criminals used their social security details to claim benefits
You only cottoned on when something called a direct earnings deduction appeared on your work payslip. Your employer had received an instruction from the DWP to take this money.
To find out more, you had to contact DWP Debt Management, which explained it was a repayment towards a £763 advance of Universal Credit made to an account in your name in September 2023.
You have never claimed UC or received it – and you told the DWP it must be fraudulent.
DWP investigated, but to your shock it concluded in March you were the claimant involved, as it found ‘significant links between you and the claimant’.
The only information the DWP told you was that the case involved separate claims made on September 5 and 15, 2023. With such scant details, you could not defend yourself.
Only through your own detective work did you elicit more details of the alleged claims.
One was made in Crewe (when you were holidaying in Scotland), another in Birmingham when you were at work all day (you are a special needs teacher), and the third in Suffolk, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from where you live.
Following a request by you for a mandatory reconsideration under its internal review process, DWP upheld its original decision.
In DWP’s eventual response, you found the claimant had stated they had three children (you have none) and found email addresses given by the claimant were also nothing to do with you, although they featured your name.
Due to your level of earnings, the three fraudulent claims were unsuccessful. But as the DWP had paid an advance of £763 on one of the claims – where the fraudster posed as you at an appointment and provided ID verification – it set out to claw the money back from you. You were forced to begin repaying the loan monthly in May this year.
You tell me you have made more than 190 phone calls, taking up nearly 50 hours, sent more than 80 emails, made 18 Subject Access Requests (mostly asking to see the personal data held by the DWP) in the hope it would prove your innocence, and issued 17 formal complaints.
After you had exhausted DWP’s internal appeals process in July, you took your case to tribunal – an independent external process for those unhappy with DWP decisions.
Once you had filed your mountain of evidence, this was shared with DWP which had the chance to review your submission and either change its decision or pursue the case.
You were aghast to be told a backlog in cases meant this could take a year. In desperation, you came to me.
The DWP’s initial response was a casual ‘we are aware of this case and are looking into it’.
After two weeks, I chased again, asking DWP to pull its finger out. A few days later you contacted me with momentous news – you had finally received a ‘change of decision’ notice agreeing yours was a case of hijacked identity.
That same day it refunded the £250 you had already reluctantly paid towards the £763 Universal Credit debt. You were elated.
A DWP spokesman said: ‘Our enquiries found M.B.’s identity was used fraudulently to make a benefit claim, and all recovery action has been cancelled.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused.’
Your complaint about the rotten service is with the Government’s Independent Case Examiner for full investigation, which hopefully will consider some financial redress.
And heaven knows how much public money has been swallowed up chasing you for a debt you didn’t owe.
Glasses Direct won’t see me right
I bought a pair of glasses from online company Glasses Direct in November 2024.
They broke in April so I sent them back requesting a repair, replacement or refund. Following various emails, a £49.50 refund was authorised.
They said this would take about five days to appear in my account.
Despite constantly chasing for more than five months, I have still not received my refund.
Please help.
H.H., Mablethorpe, Lincs.
Sally Hamilton replies: I EXPECT after so many months of chasing and waiting you felt as if you should have gone to another well-known spectacle provider.
This was certainly on your mind after being given the runaround, despite being a loyal customer of Glasses Direct since 2008.
You hoped I could help the firm see more clearly the error of its ways before taking legal steps.
When I asked the company what was causing this unacceptable delay for your refund, customer service applied 20/20 vision to your case.
It issued you an apology and a total refund of £200.95 – £48.95 for the returned glasses, £150 for the inconvenience and a £2 refund for the postage fee.
It also sent you a 100 per cent discount code for two pairs of glasses, if used before the end of this year.
A spokesman said: ‘We regret the unusual delay that H.H. experienced, which does not reflect our daily commitment to delivering quality products and services.
‘This situation was due to a technical issue and internal process failure, which we have addressed through refresher training.’
- Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk, include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.
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