Child Maintenance Service Bewertungen 

I have spent best part of this morning on hold waiting to speak to one of your child maintenance representatives only to get through to someone after 40 minutes.
The moment ‘Reece’ answered and asked for my name, I replied “sorry I can’t hear you, could you speak a bit louder please” he hung up the phone!

This is a frustrating situation for parents anyway and your customer service being poor doesn’t help anyone.

Absolutely unacceptable

It's not child maintenance , it's financial abuse by automation with no accountability !

Biggest scam ever, full of liars in that office. Tell you they have received confirmation from HMRC how much i earn and its £5000 more than what's on my HMRC account, constantly changing how much im supposed to pay and then send me bills for underpayment. People in that office need sacking

I am still waiting for a full and comprehensive breakdown of the so called "Arrears" that I have spent at least 2 years trying to chase up and yet you are still unable to give me an answer. The website does not have and section where it is easy to contact a member of staff. The arrears on my account are unlawful and you have done absolutely nothing to address my concerns.

Fraudulent company. Only operate using child benefit. Don't apply common sense. All about financial explotation.

How is this even allowed!

"The Child Maintenance Service calculates maintenance based on a paying parent’s weekly gross income. Gross income is calculated before deducting income tax and national insurance"

So they base payments to be made, on more than you actually earn! When paying 40% tax (which isn't taken into account) this makes a huge difference!

They are an absolute joke, zero consideration for your own house and bills they won't even look at income vs outgoings. But as long as the other parent can afford theirs with your money, all is good.

Even when in 50/50 care and pay half for everything, they still make one parent pay the other! How does that even work when it's 50/50.

Honestly, I feel sorry for all the people going through this.

I agree with paying for a child but it needs to be fair and based on what you are paid after tax and NI and it should consider outgoings to! If it's 50/50 no payments should be made it should be down the middle (activities, uniform etc should all be half)

How this place is allowed is beyond me.

Then you've got some parents who pay zero and get away with it.

The whole thing is a joke

Child Maintenance, I don’t understand why you don’t help and support the receiving parent.

I have been missing payment for June and even though the other parents circumstances have changed, this is unacceptable that I have to wait for some time for my payment. I didn’t receive payment for May and this is truly unacceptable. Almost two months of no payment and it clearly seems that you allow the other parent to provide whenever they can. I don’t understand this service.

If you’re looking to apply for child maintenance, in most cases they don’t help and they don’t investigate or take into understanding for the full-time/receiving parent. By my experience, I am still very disappointed with this service.

Child Maintenance, what does it take for you to understand that how this service works isn’t helping many parents at all. You are supposed to help and support the receiving parent as well and you clearly don’t.

I have been patient and understanding and I won’t stay silent anymore.

Change your service, let’s do better.

Should be called mothers maintenance service or the mothers & DWPs harrasment service.

I have my children 50% of the time during all school holidays including half terms. I additionally have them 5 nights out of every 14 days during the school term and additionally another 2 days but not nights per month equating to a total of around 43% of the time I am also single father caring for my children.

I am paying for all their school uniform, school holiday activities, shoes, trainers, clothes, coats and haircuts on top of child maintenance weekly.

Mother every 2-3 months puts in a new claim of "unearned income" demanding that I need to be paying more. Each time all my earnings, bank statements and pay slips are sent, with child maintenance service constantly re opening the case and demanding I send in the same documentation sent before.

It is borderline harrasment at a minimum at this stage and as a father that is not only providing and paying for my children I've simply had enough of such a one sided service that only caters towards the receiving parent.

Funny that the system works whereby the mother has them around 53% of the time and is able to claim child tax credits, child benefit, universal credits, child maintenance payments whilst also paying for the bare minimum towards the children. Where is my support working as much as I can whilst also being a single dad on my own for the other 43% of the time?

The system is ridiculously outdated, and only caters for the receiving parent (usually mothers).

Absolutely disgusting attitude from child maintenance from the start that follow a black and white rule book that seems to be unable to comprehend the principle of common sense.

But I imagine that getting a % of all money paid by the paying parent is the incentive for them to harrass and try to work alongside the receiving parent to get as much as possible out of the paying parent no matter how unequal the whole system is.

I opened a claim with the Child Maintenance Service after 16 years of raising my child entirely alone with no support from her father. I provided information about his current location (Cheltenham) and employment status. Despite this, I was told CMS “can’t find him” and that my claim will be suspended for a month. This is completely unfair and a disgrace. The system is failing single parents and letting absent parents off the hook. It feels like I’m being punished while the person who abandoned his responsibilities gets away freely. Unacceptable.

Hardly supportive. I live in a household that on both ends. I get mugged off and so do they. Payee gets away with everything and hudni act all the time.. where my partner has an ex partner who only wants the money..

Constantly contact and every single time get told a different outcome and the wrong information. Doesn't matter what you are the receiver or the paying you get mugged off by the party who knows how to play the system. Actually train everyone the right way so people get told the correct information... and apparently the (HMRC) isn't the trusted source for your income and tax! LOL

The worst cost of over £130m a year to abuse dads.

This agency just needs to change its name to Mothers Maintenance Service and stop lying claiming they do it for the best outcome for the kids.

This empowers mums to abuse kids for a quick buck and to get at their ex because they can..

Equality act? what equality act. CMS rips up the laws. fact..

Incompetent staff. In 5 years I’ve not received a payment. Bailiff action multiple times and all of them failed. They seem to care more about the paying parent (who doesn’t pay) than the full time single parent and child. They do everything they can to avoid taking useful actions such as taking passport/Driving License away etc because they’re so lazy. I don’t understand how it can take so long for anything to be done.

Embarrassing to see that an a government department that is responsible for the well being of children and their families is rated so poorly, I’m guessing that this is because like myself so many people have had or are continuing to have a terrible experience. The CMS have the power to destroy people’s well being and future and the complete lack of trust that nearly everyone you speak to has with them is a disgrace. Completely inadequate incompetent waste of time of time that they are. I have absolutely nothing positive to write about them other than the hold music that most people will have listened to now on their useless phone system is more bearable then the rest of the rubbish that you are going to hear when you finally get through to them.

I'm convinced that this service is useless and the UK Government is doing it's best to maintain broken families so the benefits system can keep going.

These CMS people play with people's lives and do nothing to actually help their situation let alone try to get a hold of them on the phone. I haven't seen my son in almost 6 years and I've been paying CMS all the while.

I just HATE this, these toxic women this corrupt Government schemes, I give up!

If I could give the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) zero stars, I would. Dealing with them has been one of the most stressful and mentally exhausting experiences of my life. Despite making every payment and informing them of my change in circumstances during unemployment (which they acknowledged in writing), they continue to claim I’ve missed payments.
They’ve shown a complete lack of basic logic, accountability, and compassion. Every interaction feels like shouting into a void while they pass around incorrect data like it’s a game. It’s like they’ve outsourced their calculations to a broken calculator and their customer service to a wall.
CMS doesn’t just make administrative errors—they actively destroy the mental health of people trying to do the right thing. I’ve had to chase them multiple times to fix mistakes they caused, only to be gaslit by their own internal contradictions.
Their Trustpilot reviews are not exaggerated. This is a toxic, broken system that punishes both paying and receiving parents. It makes co-parenting harder, not easier.
CMS: You need reform, oversight, and a serious reality check. People’s lives are not just reference numbers and automated letters. Sort yourselves out.

Run by a bunch of morons, you need to call on average 15 times before you get through, and when you do get through you are told the wrong information continually. I believe these people have the iq of a tin of baked beans. Idiots but then again look at the state of our government.

I’m finding this company terrible and wonder what they are actually paid for. They openly discriminate against victims of domestic abuse who are left with ptsd. They are clueless of the effects it leaves on you or how to be understanding and helpful. They refuse aiding collecting or even looking at evidence that proves their decisions are based on lies - I feel. Unbelievable!. Leaves me feeling they condone corruption.

Well done child maintenance for doing your job. I now have evidence the father has been using more than one lot of details thank you xx

Really bad service completely against the man,iv paid for a DNA test and the mother is refusing to get the test the child maintenance service keeps putting it off so I have to keep paying for a child that probably isn't mine if I want to phone it usually takes about 90 minutes to get through to basically get laughed at

Thieving, murdering, lying, extorting scum.
Designed purely to steal from paying parents, misandry is alive here. Abuse of power from the staff. They alienate both parents from one another, affecting the children they were mandated to protect, have processes made to confuse, create fictitious arrears (admit to inflating it as a deterrent and cannot explain how it originated), other RPs complain due to CMS coercing people to leave the system, affecting the children, thus also affecting the public purse. The amount of wasted time due to inefficiencies is unreal. A simple case is convoluted due to the layers of staff and system errors. No way to deal with the issue, explain it to anyone. Inflate and quick to collect fines that are unjustified, even with evidence on file and confirmation from themselves it's not the PP's fault, quick to put the PP on a DEO affecting their reputation and doubling their true liability for no reason whatsoever. No compliance mitigation, clearly no operational risk, they breach SARs, actively sublimate your data and do not release case notes.
DWPministers ignore, complaints team ignore, even MP complaints aren't actioned. Teams are all in silos and no one understands the other teams processes, with no broad understanding a simple query is never answered in a holistic way, 1/10 agents do not fob you off as per clear instruction. Even their hard work on a case is unravelled due to the inadequacies, example I'd overpaid due to an incorrect schedule, yet had four changes in two to three weeks, one day was not paid and due to this i wad put on collect and pay although i had overpaid £160 more, before time (paid in full and on time is their policy) , person who made this decision stays anonymous, didn't call me and within a day was with my payroll. No manager intervention as per another ignored complaint, a good caseworker tried to fix it ended up delaying me six weeks and creating more arrears to attempt to fix it, couldn't make it up. No accountability for the multiple mistakes, multiple system errors. They do not transfer yet they cannot deal with the query as not trained, then the agents get rude and upset due to not being able to handle the calls coming in. Then when it is fixed it all unravels again because they can't implement the solutions from their root causes. Do not action upheld mandatory reconsiderations or complaints then errors carry on for months. I'm overpaying for a six month old upheld mandatory reconsideration not implemented. I'm currently paying fines for fictitious arrears, collection fines due to confirmed errors from them but it's irrelevant, now for over six months, ignored by all their bigwhigs for nearly three months and multiple contact, not even one response with an SLA. By far the worst institute to ever exist, pure anathema to children, society, the legislature a pure embarrassment to be holding themselves as civil servants. It's become a business, where they can admit to stealing and messing up a case and every process to fix is just mishandled. If this was a private company it would be bankrupt and shut down within a few months of operating. I have no doubt multiple suicides, huge loss of tax funds, children losing parents due to these muddying the waters creating false bogeymen are all due to their malice and incompetence. No regards for reality, true liabilities from income or anyone in the equation.

There is not one positive to be said about this shambles. More than 60 hours of my life, being transparent and left in a spiralling abyss of dealing with them on a nearly daily basis. Even if the agents try and help and finally understand they cannot do nothing because it's a mess.