Centrelink responds to my complaint

*faints*

Well blow me down with a feather. Centrelink has actually responded to my online complaint I made a couple of days ago. It was limited to 1,000 words so I had to make it brief. It seems though that my brevity paid off (ack, such a butchery of the language) and I was rung today by a Centrelink complaints person - an actual human being to boot - who was wanting to know all about what had happened. After getting up off the lounge from my faint (thankfully not a panic attack this time) I managed to start spluttering something. This was the warm up......

The conversation eventually started after my shock at actually getting a call from a Centrelink complaints person. I'm terrible on the phone, I think it's because I can't see the other person, but on this occasion I happily talked normally and relaxed. I explained what had happened since July 2nd when the Intention To Claim was registered, the fuckup with Births Deaths & Marriages, and Australia Post, meaning the form didn't get lodged until late July. That David's work had lied and fucked up his whole Sickness Allowance claim by saying he resigned. That he was given the impression on the phone that the switch to Newstart after that would be a simple procedure as it was part of the initial sickness claim. That a whole new claim was started for the switch to Newstart right from the beginning. That he ended up back at square one with Centrelink wanting an Employment Separation Certificate that work wasn't going to give to him. That I went to the local Centrelink office 4 times in two days, at one point in tears, at another point being told to get help from charity. That I'd worked 30 years, that I was now on the DSP, and why is this being done to me? These were some but not all of the points raised.

She offered to put me through to a social worker right then and there. I said that was OK as we'd just been assigned a brand spanking new one that we were going to see next Tuesday. Then she put in a thing that some other head honcho Centrelink person would ring me in the next few days to bla about it all. Why not? I agreed.

So in the next 2-3 working days some head honcho Centrelink person is going to ring me and bla further about all of this. How interesting. Needless to say I will be bla-ing like there's no tomorrow!