Bloody nightmare Graeme.
When dealing with any large organisation in these circumstances it is always worthwhile asking to speak to ‘The Bereavement Team’ most of these organisations have such a team and they will have undergone additional training and be used to dealing with the additional complexity.
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I agree Kev. I have been genuinely comforted by the consideration that any number of these teams have shown me over the last few months.
Sadly in this case the whole business is about a beneficiary claiming their pension entitlement in the case of the original pensioner dying. These are the bereavement people. That’s why I’m so very surprised that the two halves of what, from the original exployee’s point of view, looks like a single company’s pension scheme can’t communicate with one another. Instead they’re choosing to make an elderly widower jump through the same ‘wet ink and registered post’ hoops twice.
At different times Claire was both an Oracle DBA and a networks engineer. The idea that the organisation of this information and its inter-communication is so dreadfully poor is, well, ironic to say the least.
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Really sad to read of your woes Graeme, not as if you’ve not got enough to cope with already.
I fear and suspect that these things are a mix of accidental and wilful incompetence, the latter intended to make people just give-up and go away.
I suspect there’s not too much wilfulness in this case. It’s just the ‘business’ approach to everything. The two halves of the scheme probably had to be distinct, maybe even for regulatory reasons. So their record-keeping wouldn’t naturally have been integrated. Making it so, even to a minimal extent, would have taken resource and no business likes spending resource when it doesn’t have to.
When Claire joined Vodafone it was a tiny fraction of the size it is now. She quickly became one of the older employees and she died young. So compared with what’s coming they won’t have a huge cohort of pensioners yet and even fewer of their dependants will be doing what I’m having to do. There won’t have been business pressure to resolve this.
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Vodafone were/are an absolute nightmare for admin, they have bought so many companies and absolutely failed to onboard or merge the systems and processes. Vodafone is effectively lots of companies all working independently under a single name/badge.
When they bought Cable and Wireless I lasted a year before I quit because of the bullshit introduced, especially where there was no need or lack of processes to justify it.
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Claire came across this time and again.
To be fair they seem to have outsourced their entire pension operation to WTW. Sadly WTW seem to be just as fragmented internally.
Years ago - about 20 I think - I ran a Business Continuity business in Newbury. We ran a routine network security scan and found an unknown network.
My guy looked deeper and called me over. He was in the very heart of Vodafone’s mainframe network.
Turned out the training department over the way had fucked up - allegedly.
A quick phone call and the number of cars arriving was impressive.
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At one point I think half the working age population of Newbury worked for Vodaphone
Did the other half work for Vodafone?
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I never worked for Vodaphone, never lived in Newbury either.
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And they were only based there because of Gerry Whent’s love of the gee-gees.
We were at one of the company Spring Dances (Ally Pally IIRC) long after he had retired and Claire spotted him, completely sozzled, on his own, tottering around the outer edge of the dining area. Few of the 10,000 or so revellers would have been old enough to recognise him …
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HMRC again 
For the last year I’ve been filing £0 VAT returns as I’m not contracting any more.
Missed the return Dec-Mar and HMRC decide that based on my average returns I owe them £9000 for the quarter. So even when I was paying it was always less than £6000 so how the fuck do they determine that despite my average being £0 I owe more than I’ve ever paid in the last 7 yrs.
Submit the return and it gets rejected saying there is already a return submitted and I need to pay £9000
Considering it took them 2 yrs to fix the last double dip they did (still haven’t had the money back though) they can go fucking whistle for this payment.
Cunts
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They do seem completely fucked
They did the same to me in Jan for employers NI contributions even though I ceased being an employee of my company in May 2023. It got followed up with a debt collection agency letter from BPO who I phoned and told to fuck off, haven’t heard anything since.
That didn’t stop a company called BPO Collections getting in touch
Not sure if they are trying to use automation but everything they do seems to be wrong or just plain made up.
Even though our accountant does all the company and personal tax I still get annoyed by receiving an endless stream of factually incorrect drivel from HMRC which seem to employ a random number generator and a monkey with a franking machine to send letters demanding some sum of money or other that constantly changes and for which the calculations are completely opaque.
Meanwhile the current government are complicit in £20bn+ of fraud related to the public purse and their mates and donors.
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Hear hear !
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Snowflakes.
Yes, those snowflakes. I hate the expression as a overgeneralisation, but as a descriptor for a minority it is accurate.
This week I have been interrogated and (finally) exonerated for alleged Bullying of new staff members.
4 complaints in 4 days even wears me down.
No evidence given, but the use of “trigger” words, has senior management in a great breast beating frenzy.
Apparently these days you are guilty until proven otherwise.
Each was a case of me asking the respective staff member to complete tasks which are part of their basic job description. In the contract that they have signed. The reason that they get paid.
And yet, the fact that they first refused to do what they were instructed to by the On Duty Supervisor, were referred to me, and were again told to get on with it, now seems to be impossible for some staff to understand, much less comply. When I stated that if they didn’t comply, that they would be in breach of The Code of Conduct and a Letter of Misconduct would be issued, tantrums were thrown (another breach) and complaints logged.
Three of these raised the “R” word
Thankfully my record on calling out racists is well documented.
However, a further Cockpunch to senior management for not looking at my Permanent Record, treating me like a criminal, threatening me with dismissal and legal action, only to finally come to the correct conclusion…the staff are not capable of taking instruction.
I am getting too old for this shit !
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Aren’t we all mate ? Too wearing.
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Breathe deeply, at your age your aorta isn’t up to such rage….
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