WINZ database

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linw

2849 posts

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#239467 19-Jul-2018 15:31

Wonder what happened to their database as have seen several people complaining about it reverting to names they had changed earlier and my wife's winter log allowance letter had a wrong middle name.

When she rang, the guy was well aware of these problems apologising profusely and saying it won't happen again!

Reverting to older names sounds like they had to rebuild from old files?

wellygary

8315 posts

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#2058901 19-Jul-2018 15:47

From what I have seen they had major issues with the winter payment,

They have admitted they cannot split it and for a couple they pay it to whoever has the numerically "lower" client number.

This makes me think when you change a name they generate a new client number for you (any one able to confirm this?)

For the winter payment I guess they ran a query to pull all the names of those eligible, and then sorted to the lowest client number, if client numbers are allocated sequentially over time, lower numbers will have older details if the apply to the same person

linw

2849 posts

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#2058963 19-Jul-2018 19:34

Interesting points, wellygary. They did allocate the payment to the lower no., but I am still puzzled why they couldn't split the payment as they must have both no.s if they are able to compare them to decide the lower no.

Anyway, it was the wrong name issue that still puzzles me. How do they get a middle name as Dale instead of Gail?? Suppose it has one letter right and it does sound similar!

Guess we will never know what happened.

Aredwood

3885 posts

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#2059057 19-Jul-2018 21:28

linw:
Interesting points, wellygary. They did allocate the payment to the lower no., but I am still puzzled why they couldn't split the payment as they must have both no.s if they are able to compare them to decide the lower no.

Anyway, it was the wrong name issue that still puzzles me. How do they get a middle name as Dale instead of Gail?? Suppose it has one letter right and it does sound similar!

Guess we will never know what happened.

Probably some handwritten paper forms involved in the process somewhere, therefore spelling mistakes can and will happen.

As for payment splitting, they probably had to just rename a previous type of payment topup instead of doing a systems redesign to create a whole new one. Surely not being able to split the payment can't be that much of a problem. Or does everyone also split their power bills 50 / 50 as well?

frankv

5680 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#2059142 20-Jul-2018 08:06

I can imagine some bright spark having the idea to normalise the database and only store names once.

linw

2849 posts

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#2059158 20-Jul-2018 08:35

"Probably some handwritten paper forms involved in the process somewhere, therefore spelling mistakes can and will happen".

No. People had old renounced/changed names brought back from the dead. And, in our case, a name just changed itself!

And, the person contacted knew they had problems - obviously had many other calls.