Grant Recipients targeted by Service NSW’s unconscionable grant clawback scam wise to contact the NSW Ombudsman

September 7, 2024

Some of the grant recipients (of the 2021 COVID-19 Micro Business Grant) continuing to be harassed by Service NSW trying to retrospectively questioning their grant eligibility (more than 2 years after being properly paid), have suggested to Steve at Nature Trail to report this scandal to the New South Wales Government Ombudsman (NSW Ombudsman) as soon as possible.

The NSW Ombudsman is chartered to handle most individual complaints against NSW Government Agencies.

Check this list out…

“The types of complaints we handle can include, but not limited to:

dishonest, unfair or unreasonable behaviour
lack of transparency with a decision
unfair or flawed policies or procedures
unreasonable delays
failure to act on complaints
failure to reply to correspondence
failure to manage conflicts of interest“

We note that Service NSW meets all these criteria for our complaint hands down!

Also, how about…

Service NSW’s failure to have a legitimate employee of Service NSW contact its approved grant recipients instead of some scammer debt collector on commission using a first name pseudonym;
Its Intimidating baseless accusation of us being retrospective “fraudsters”;
Its deployment of ring-in anonymous first name only callers demanding that they “must first identify us” before proceeding with their demands for reassessment 2 years after the grant contract was paid out and legally terminated;
Service NSW callers and emailers having no qualifications, training or idea about tax, accounting, business administration, terms and conditions, courtesy or English;
Its lack of record keeping of the information that we have already provided on request – yet all presumed lost in the crashed database else shredded;
The list of atrocious incompetence by Service NSW in all this clawback – its repeat of the application process more than 2 years after the grant agreement terminated, its petty questioning of grant recipienst all over again, its serial changing of the grant’s original Terms and Conditions (and Grant Guidelines) is a farce and Monty Pythonesque…

So..

NSW Ombudsman

T: 1800 451 524

W: ombo.nsw.gov.au

A: Pavilion On George, Level 24/580 George St, Sydney NSW 2000

Opening Hours: Monday to Friday between 9am and 4pm

We recommend first phoning the NSW Ombudsman so you can garner more about what the office can do and also at the same time explain your problem specifically about Service NSW in its current unfair harassment and contrived debt collection of your legitimate grant funding of 2021.

Importantly, while you’re on the phone to the NSW Ombudsman, be sure to lodge your complaint over the phone to them and obtain a unique ‘Case Reference Number’. This will avoid making another phone call back to them or having to fill in their website’s online Complaints Form.

Nature Trail’s complaint to the NSW Ombudsman

Now we preface this by the fact that by the time we contacted the NSW Ombudsman’s office in mid-August 2024, we had already won our case against Service NSW’s grant clawback scam, and given ourselves an elephant stamp.

Beat the Bastards!

So, when we phoned in, we noted that the NSW Ombudsman switchboard options had already allocated a dedicated phone digit option number ‘4’ reserved specifically for complaints against Service NSW. Chuckle. So clearly we’re not the first by any means.

Having then reported our compliant over the phone the following is the information we received back at the time:

NSW Ombudsman’s Recommended Complaint Process:

First, report our complaint to Service NSW’s to its recently released ‘Internal Review‘ to have Service NSW review our particular case.
Then if no joy, phone the NSW Ombudsman to lodge the complaint
We obtained a NSW Ombudsman Complaint Number: ‘C/2024/17563‘
For followup Email pat@ombo.nsw.gov.au
A case manager from NSW Ombudsman was supposed to then later contact us by phone in a week’s time. That was almost now month ago yet no joy thus far.