A disabled Wellington woman was “distraught” when she woke up on Good Friday to realise the council had taken hundreds of dollars out of her bank account for someone else’s rates.
On top of her normal fortnightly rates payment of $96, the council deducted $322 from her account, which should have been charged to a different person.
The woman, who did not want her name used, is a beneficiary who said she did not have savings to keep her afloat and desperately needed the payment refunded.
After three phone calls, one frustrated Reddit post and five days of waiting, the council apologised and returned her money.
The council said the mishap occurred because of a manual human error and it did not believe other ratepayers had been similarly impacted.
But the woman said this was not the first time her rates payments had been mishandled by the council.
The 39-year-old lives in central Wellington and receives $500 per week after tax through the supported living benefit, because of her disability.
She has a genetic degenerative eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa and said she only has about 5% of her vision left.
On the morning of Friday, April 3, she was set to receive her benefit payment but when she checked her account, a large chunk of it was missing after the unexpected $322 deduction from the council, with a rates reference number that was not her own.
She also found the council had tried to process that same transaction on March 20 but it did not go through because of insufficient funds.
The woman said money was often tight so she planned exactly how to allocate it.
Setting up a direct debit for her council rates was supposed to help her be “responsible” and meant if rates changed she would automatically be charged the correct amount.
“I was distraught, I was extremely upset,” she said.
“I had no idea what the hell was going on because I know that my rates payments are much less than that.”
The woman called the council’s help desk twice that Friday but was told no record of the payment could be found and she would need to wait until Tuesday, when the council’s credit control team would be back at work after the long weekend.
She sent that team an email, but its automatic reply said they would respond within five business days, which she realised would delay a refund at least another week.
“I was starting to get quite distressed at this point ... I just felt extremely blown off.”
When she called the council again on Tuesday morning, she was put on hold and eventually told she might be able to receive a rates credit for the amount she had been overcharged, rather than a refund.
She felt the people she spoke to did not believe her and were not empathetic to her situation.
The woman decided to make a post on the Wellington Reddit page on Tuesday to see if anyone else was in the same boat as her.
“$300 is the difference of whether I can eat and pay bills and I need that money back immediately,” her post read.
The Easter weekend incident was the second time the council had made an error with her rates payments.
In March, she said she set up her direct debit for ongoing rates charges and also made a lump sum payment for the past three months’ worth of rates.
When her direct debit began, she found she was being overcharged because the council had not processed her lump sum payment.
At that time, the woman said she also spoke to the council’s help desk and was only given rates credit.
Wellington City councillor Tony Randle and Deputy Mayor Ben McNulty saw her Reddit post and escalated the issue to the council’s chief financial officer.
The council’s credit control team leader contacted her later that day to apologise and advise the council would be refunding the money.
The team leader confirmed the error was caused by a council staff member who manually put in the wrong account number and accidentally applied another ratepayer’s charge to her.
“Not once, in any of the other phone calls I had, did anyone say ‘sorry’,” the woman said.
Randle told the Herald he was unhappy the woman was incorrectly charged and the way her complaint was handled.
He said her complaint should have been escalated and the council was investigating why it wasn’t.
“If it is a training thing, we know we can put out better efforts on training.
“If it is a process gap, we need to change the process.”
He felt the council might have a “communication issue” when handling individual cases.
“We take our management of direct debit authorities very seriously because we want people to be able to trust us on that,” he said.
“We try for zero errors, and obviously we’re not there yet, but we will certainly learn something [from this].”
The woman has since revoked the council’s access to her account and is considering setting up an automatic payment instead, which she will be in control of.
A council spokesman told the Herald they had processed the refund and were apologising to the woman.
“We are still working through what actually happened but we believe that the problem was the result of a one-off human error.”
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.