Despite the issue with the first overpayment not yet being resolved, Thoral said StudyLink has since overpaid him again – this time for $99.59.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has really pissed me off, if I\u2019m being honest,\u201d the Massey University student said. <\/p>\n
Massey University student Jean Thoral says he has been overpaid by StudyLink twice because of an administrative error on the agency’s side. <\/p>\n
In July, Thoral began receiving weekly student allowance payments of $147 from StudyLink, which do not need to be paid back, unlike a student loan.<\/p>\n
StudyLink is a service provided by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) that provides financial support to students.<\/p>\n
Thoral was eligible for a student allowance during the weeks when his weekly personal income was less than $276.11 before tax and his weekly combined income with his partner was less than $1150 before tax.<\/p>\n
Thoral submitted weekly payslips to prove his income.<\/p>\n
For three weeks in August, Thoral\u2019s income was higher than the threshold because his income fluctuates.<\/p>\n
In early August, he spoke to a StudyLink call centre staff member who told him based on his recent income declarations his allowance would stop automatically. <\/p>\n
Instead of recording down his income accurately for those three weeks, StudyLink recorded it as \u201cnil\u201d meaning Thoral continued to be paid an allowance even though he was ineligible. <\/p>\n
In an appeal process, StudyLink accepted responsibility for the administrative error and said Thoral acted in good faith, but still wanted him to repay the $441.13 overpayment.<\/p>\n
\u201cMSD has a legal duty to recover debt, and we can only write it off under certain circumstances,\u201d MSD centralised services general manager Paula Ratahi-O\u2019Neill told the Herald. <\/p>\n
Appeal documents shared with the Herald showed the agency had two reasons for being unable to write off the overpayment. <\/p>\n
Student debt less than $5000 could be written off if the person in debt altered their \u201cposition in reliance on the validity of the payment\u201d and if it would be \u201cinequitable to recover the payment\u201d. <\/p>\n
In the appeal documents, StudyLink said Thoral did not regularly check his bank accounts so he was not aware he was overpaid by the agency.<\/p>\n
It argued that because he was unaware of the payments, he could not have made any financial decisions on the basis of receiving that money. <\/p>\n
The agency also said because Thoral was currently employed, it would not be inequitable to set up a payment plan to recover his debt from him. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision to seek repayment has been reviewed, and upheld, because Jean advised that he still had the money and was able to repay it,\u201d Ratahi-O\u2019Neill told the Herald.<\/p>\n
Thoral argued he was a contractor whose employment would end on April 4 so his current income should not be factored into the decision.<\/p>\n
He said he could use his savings to pay back the money but doing so would put him in a \u201cs***ty situation\u201d because of the high cost of living. <\/p>\n
Ratahi-O\u2019Neill said MSD could negotiate a suitable repayment rate to avoid hardship, reiterating no interest was charged on debt. <\/p>\n
The Ministry of Social Development, which runs StudyLink, said it was “tightly constrained by legislation”.<\/p>\n
Thoral has submitted three written appeals and attended a hearing to try fight StudyLink\u2019s request for him to pay back $441.13. <\/p>\n
He estimated participating in the entire process took about 40 hours of work on his part. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got work to do, I\u2019ve got a life to live, I\u2019ve got s*** to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was motivated to spend time appealing because \u201cthe problem isn\u2019t the debt, it\u2019s the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he felt lucky to be a confident 34-year-old who could try fight for himself but thought an 18-year-old student in his position might not \u201chave the guts\u201d to do the same. <\/p>\n
He would feel \u201cquite relieved\u201d if he won his appeal, and \u201cdisappointed and helpless\u201d if he lost. <\/p>\n
He is currently appealing via the Student Allowance Appeal Authority, which is his final chance at making a submission. <\/p>\n
The final decision about his appeal will be made in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite the issue with the first overpayment not yet being resolved, Thoral said StudyLink has since overpaid him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[165405,132857,74,3041,69959,682,84587,127,18791,42,28166,3234,43,185160,185161,48037,45822,83752,1527,22139,12633,9631,185159,40,38,41,39,1528,52],"class_list":["post-348545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-165405","tag-accepting","tag-after","tag-agency","tag-allowance","tag-being","tag-demands","tag-despite","tag-fighting","tag-headlines","tag-mistake","tag-months","tag-news","tag-overpaid","tag-overpayment","tag-repayment","tag-request","tag-responsibility","tag-return","tag-spends","tag-spent","tag-student","tag-studylinks","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-university","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}