It’s sad and annoying but what an opportunity to call the pension provider and say: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
21–30 of 162 posts
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#22Ideally we should using technology to do what we intend to do. Unfortunately the reality is that technology uses us and makes us do things we normally would consider stupid.
Technology doesn't use us, we use technology. Then we make some other we do stupid things.
Too many times someone introduces technology to dilute responsibility for me to believe that such outcomes are typically unintentional. Technology totally does what people intend it to do, except the average person is on the receiving side of the whip.
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#23> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.
To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
To be equally fair, "Crapita" (as private eye calls them) is an incompetent joke that scores government contracts through corruption and then pays the bare minimum (below minimum wage in one case) to the providers of its services. There are lots of examples like the one a above.
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#24Cue the Monty Python skit…
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#25[flagged]
Millions of families suffer every year
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#26> The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. Sounds like garbage software
I love how an obvious bug that should have led to a rejection of the delivery of the system - or an emergency fix as per the support requirements these large contracts always come with - has instead transformed into official DfE policy. That's just so typical of the newfangled digital bureaucracy: it's far easier to change the workflow than it is to fix the software.
"Computer says no"[1] has been a hallmark of bureaucracy for some time.
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#27It’s sad and annoying but what an opportunity to call the pension provider and say: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
That might add a bit of fun the first time. This is the fourth.
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#28> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.
To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
To be more fair: it is easy to check if they are alive or not. This is not rocket science.
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#29> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.
> administered by Capita
if you know
Re: Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
To be more fair: it is easy to check if they are alive or not. This is not rocket science.
In these times, it is only easy in-person.