Where's my rebate?

[Degga]

I am still chasing my child care rebate for the first quarter of the last finance year (July - September 2008).

What happened was my partner and I split prior. As I was paying the child care fees, I looked into who actually ends up receiving the rebate and how the Family Assistance Office decides who gets it. I found out that which ever parent is claiming the child care benefit (that's the one that cuts down your fees rather than getting stung with full price) is the one who receives the rebate automatically. Upon learning of this, I promptly had the rebate changed over to me as it was only fair because I had sole responsibility of paying the fees.

Anyway, cut a long story short, I never received a rebate for that quarter. Why? Because the child care centre sent the FAO my child's attendance details in with my ex partner's Customer Reference Number. She never received the rebate as of course she wasn't claiming the child care benefit. Since then it's been a case of speaking to the FAO, then being referred back to the centre, who have each time told me there's nothing they can do. They even printed me out my child's attendance details to give to them thinking that would work. Hell no, it can't be that simple. Even now their system has completely changed and the centre's are doing it electronically via a contracted private software company so no one at the FAO knows what the hell I'm talking about when I refer to this being for the Sept-Oct 2008 quarter because back then it was done manually directly to them.

Can't it just be a simple case of gathering the data from my partner's file and using that? I'll be continuing with this as I can because at the moment there's thousands sitting there in the government purse that I'm entitled to.