Lost

I received this the other day from a correspondent:

"Hi Ken,

I'm writing to you purely out of frustration and the lack of anyone to answer my questions regarding our child benefit claim. In brief the story goes as follows:

My family and myself moved to the UK on the 04 Sep 08 to take up a position with a firm based in Buckinghamshire. I filled out all the required forms to get things like my NI number and NHS stuff. My wife was told that we were entitled to claim child benefit and the forms were sent to her. She was also told that due to the fact that she had no NI number, after she lodged her claim form, the child benefit dept would start the ball rolling on getting her an NI number and this would happen automatically. She filled out the forms and sent them, with our childrens' birth certs., on the 15 Oct 08.

After hearing nothing, we contacted them to check the progress and were told that nothing was happening and they were waiting for us to supply her NI number. We organised this ourselves and provided them with the info, and started the waiting game again.

On the 12 Feb 08 we received a letter from them telling us that due to a high work load they couldn't find our paperwork and could we pls fill out the forms again.

I rang to speak to someone about this and was told that we would have to apply again, it could take up to another 16 weeks to process, no answer to the whereabouts of the copies of our childrens certs., 'no, there is no-one you can talk to about this' and our payments will only be backdated in relation to the new application.

Whilst the payment thing is a bit of a pain, I'm more concerned about the location of the copies of the certs and the original application with all the personal details (including banking details).

I can't understand why these people are protected in their crystal palaces and are not required to answer for the mistakes they make. I know if I stuff up at work, I'm brought to task and made to account for my actions.

I apologise if this doesn't quite cover the intention of your site, I just had to vent my frustration somewhere...."

Has anyone else had problems wrt HMRC losing important documents?

Tax does have to be taxing.

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