Hi all, not sure if anyone has any advice at all but very frustrated!! I'll try and keep it brief; we recently got our yearly direct debit mandate for the coming years rent and it's £75 a month more than last years, even though the letter we received last week said it was only going up by £3.26 a week???!!! We've been in contact with them, and so far they've been helpful and have decreased the monthly payment but it still seems way too high. We've had a dig back through letters and last years statements, and it looks like they mis-calculated the monthly payment last year, as the year before we had received some housing benefit due to a double redundancy, so we didn't do the math as it looked ok. (Sorry I was meant to be keeping this brief!)ANYHOO, I believe that unless they explain to us that they are taking back possible arears, and try and work out a repayment plan with us, then they cannot just take the money back, when it was their mistake, and one they haven't even acknowledged yet! I will go to the CAB if needs be, but just wanted to get my facts right so I'm ready for them if they realise what they've done! [:)] I know that if the lovely tax office mess up your tax they give you a year's notice that they will be taking it back...surely this should extend to housing associations? I'm 3 payments away from being IVA free and didn't envision spending the spare pennies on rent.....
