Check your pay statements
Thread Starter
Check your pay statements
How often do you attempt to decipher your pay statements? It seems since CarrillionAmey took over much of the back office functions for raising housing charges, all sorts of problems have appeared. We were trying to reverse a garage charge and this led to me being billed for three garages. A friend at Shrivenham managed to get a furnished SFA charge reversed and he was then charged retrospectively for 4 garages, and the 'system' then started charging him for 'overseas fuel and light', but I suppose Shrivenahm is on a different planet!
An attaché friend of mine lives in a rent and utilities free residence (part of the package for us types) and he, too, has started to be billed for 'Overseas Fuel and Light'. And these are not trivial amounts. In the case of Shrivenham, my friend will be getting back over £3000 in his next pay packet; what I find frustrating is that it is so, so difficult to get the charges reversed, and it can take months. Furthermore, PSFs (in my case the Global Admin Unit, Glasgow) generally don't have the experience or knowledge to deal with the issues.
My advice: check, check, check your payslips!
An attaché friend of mine lives in a rent and utilities free residence (part of the package for us types) and he, too, has started to be billed for 'Overseas Fuel and Light'. And these are not trivial amounts. In the case of Shrivenham, my friend will be getting back over £3000 in his next pay packet; what I find frustrating is that it is so, so difficult to get the charges reversed, and it can take months. Furthermore, PSFs (in my case the Global Admin Unit, Glasgow) generally don't have the experience or knowledge to deal with the issues.
My advice: check, check, check your payslips!
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For all the abuse directed at ‘Handbrake House’ and ‘blunties’ in general you didn’t get this sort of problem too often when administration was kept ‘in-house’. And if you did then it was soon sorted out by people you saw face-to-face.
Thread Starter
Agreed, EG. The onus is clearly on the individual to sort out his or her pay and allowances, and to remind Gen Office when to raise charges and payments. The payslips are very, very user unfriendly, too.
Complicated pay-slips are the norm wherever you work, Qantas as an example are very good at the art, your not members of an exclusive club in that regard 
Have to agree with the out sourcing bit though, I remember when handbrake house was being "dismantled" and they all said this will end in tears. Having had to deal with one of the firms business was outsourced to i now agree, lets just say if PPrune had a bleep machine the bleep machine would overheat and explode listening to my explanation. We all moaned about handbrake house and there mileage forms etc, but at least you got to talk to a real person who could type info into a system that would tell him what was happening. Now you get music on a premium rate number and very little "personal service" once they answer.
Have to agree with the out sourcing bit though, I remember when handbrake house was being "dismantled" and they all said this will end in tears. Having had to deal with one of the firms business was outsourced to i now agree, lets just say if PPrune had a bleep machine the bleep machine would overheat and explode listening to my explanation. We all moaned about handbrake house and there mileage forms etc, but at least you got to talk to a real person who could type info into a system that would tell him what was happening. Now you get music on a premium rate number and very little "personal service" once they answer.
Well I am sort of pleased that realisation is dawning that (we) blunties were not as black as painted. However, I cannot believe that someone in the services has to use a premium rate number to check his/her pay statement. I hope it is ridiculous, but if true is atrocious....................
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I am coming towards the end of my overseas tour and I had an e-mail with the opening phrase "Whist doing our management checks it has been flagged up that you ......" and in my case
have a child that was educated at your location and not at an expensive boarding school,where she would have an entitlement of 6 return flights per annum to go home. Because you chose to stay as a family unit she is not eligable for LOA whilst awaiting her University start date, Is not entitled to GYH overseas, so you have to pay to take her home during and at the end of your post and oh by the way, we want all her LOA back that we forgot to take of you when she graduated.
So from my fag packet maths I have saved the Crown 4 years private schooling and 12 return flights equating to around 102000 pounds.
I now have a debt raised against my pay for my troubles.
have a child that was educated at your location and not at an expensive boarding school,where she would have an entitlement of 6 return flights per annum to go home. Because you chose to stay as a family unit she is not eligable for LOA whilst awaiting her University start date, Is not entitled to GYH overseas, so you have to pay to take her home during and at the end of your post and oh by the way, we want all her LOA back that we forgot to take of you when she graduated.
So from my fag packet maths I have saved the Crown 4 years private schooling and 12 return flights equating to around 102000 pounds.
I now have a debt raised against my pay for my troubles.
Last edited by Bannock; 11th May 2015 at 20:06.
Thread Starter
Speaking today with my support unit on an unrelated matter, it appears there have been many, many errors occurring during the transition to the CarillionAmey back office contract - 'data migration' and 'keystroke' errors being cited as the cause. Again, these aren't small sums of money, so I implore all of you to check your pay statements, whether you are in SFA or not.
Last edited by Whenurhappy; 12th May 2015 at 14:11.
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I left full time service in 2013 and since then, every month without fail, I have received a pay statement in the post telling me that the MOD has paid me £0.00 this month!
What a waste of time, effort and money.
What a waste of time, effort and money.
Seconded - as I'm now working in the IT world I can confirm the process of data-migration is nearly always sub-contracted out to the lowest bidder. Any quality checks are usually cursory as it is accepted that users will find the errors. Shame it is never those signing the contracts who experience the issues. When I'm President - all companies that sell these services will have to use them for their own admin - that'll keep them keen! 
Thread Starter
Well, well. I've just managed to get to see this month's pay statement (I'm not normally able to get access to JPA) and it transpires I've just had £500 deducted in two goes for 'Overseas Fuel and Light arrears'. Digging around yesterday, this seems to have been another 'data migration' error by CarillonAmey. Luckily my support unit clerk is 'old school' and is attempting to get these reversed. Possibly in June. Or July.
But I have had the furnishing charge from 2013 reversed...
I'm not one to get 'shouty' but I think the days of automatic deductions from salary without warning should be over. How about a system that automatically notifies you that a charge will be levied, with, say, a 28-day cooling off period in which incorrect charges can be remedied? At least in the financial services sector gives you 14 days to cancel a contract.
But I have had the furnishing charge from 2013 reversed...
I'm not one to get 'shouty' but I think the days of automatic deductions from salary without warning should be over. How about a system that automatically notifies you that a charge will be levied, with, say, a 28-day cooling off period in which incorrect charges can be remedied? At least in the financial services sector gives you 14 days to cancel a contract.
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Perhaps folk could write to CarillionAmey and invoice them for the arrears, give them 28 days to pay and them take them to the small claims track of the County Court. Might focus their efforts.
Time to go back to 6 Pall Mall and Cox's and King's ledgers - I remember going in there and being shown my page in the ledger. Don't think the guy behind the desk had a quill pen, but I an sure he wore striped trousers and a black jacket!
I'm not one to get 'shouty' but I think the days of automatic deductions from
salary without warning should be over
At least, I think that is how it works.
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Start sending them registered letters and invoice them per letter, say £30 a go until the situation is rectified. Then start adding interest charges on the monies owed! say at the rate of a money lending firm, which is about 1400%
Wander00:-
Ah, a time when the only way was the right way. I still have "The Officers Banking Handbook" issued by them to me when they became both my Pay Agents and my bankers (A-N?). I don't recall any snafus at all as they distributed MOD's largess and patiently recorded my squandering of it. The young of today? They wouldn't begin to understand...
Time to go back to 6 Pall Mall and Cox's and King's ledgers -
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Carillion Amey tendered very cheaply for this last year. So cheaply in fact, that Interserve (a competitor in the bid process) challenged the award and threatened legal action on the basis that the promised service would be undeliverable at the tendered quote. My experience of Interserve is bad when they're charging the NHS a fortune, so god knows what happens when a management service is cut to the bone. Well, you can see what happens.
Pay peanuts get monkeys (or, count beans stuff troops?)?
http://www.fmj.co.uk/legal-challenge...ntract-awards/
http://www.building.co.uk/interserve...069077.article
Interserve's legal challenge to £2.8bn defence contracts dropped | Online News | Building
Pay peanuts get monkeys (or, count beans stuff troops?)?
http://www.fmj.co.uk/legal-challenge...ntract-awards/
http://www.building.co.uk/interserve...069077.article
Interserve's legal challenge to £2.8bn defence contracts dropped | Online News | Building