howie’s halfpipe

Today I got a letter at my old address, most weeks i seem to get mail there. things like ‘get this fancy new credit card’ or the friggin humane society who sends me mail all the time, in fact they send me more mail since i called up and asked to be removed from their mailing list.

Todays mail was the humane society, a superannuation one and one from a debt collector.

the debt collection letter was very short, it simply said it was acting on behalf of centrelink and that i owed the commonwealth $51

I thought this was a little odd, seeing as my last dealing with centrelink where in 2003 . The letter didnt explain why i owed them money so i found a phone number for centrelink and spent a good 20mins on hold.

Eventually i got to speak to a human who said i owed them $51 dollars becasue i got overpaind in some of my youth allowance payments. And that now centrelink had outsourced it’s debt collection.

they sure are quick at noticing things, oh look 5 years ago we paid this guy $51 too much over a year or so. Lets get our money! Some work experience kid was forced to clean out an old dusty filing cabinet in the basement of a centrelink office.