1 hour ago, Gandtee said:

Did they contact you to say your pension has resumed?

Yes on the phone to DWP they said they will resume my pension which took 8 days.

They also added they would stop my pension again if they didn't receive the life form.

I went through the wringer of contacting HM Government about pensions recently.

While you can get significantly cheaper call rates with skype (I actually used the 0800 freephone numbers and got transferred, so free), if you don't have a smart phone, the method I used to call cheaply to the correct number for overseas callers was to setup a mytello account https://app.mytello.com/en/ and add the needed number - then you just make what is then a local call to the Bangkok number allocated. The mytello charge is 0.4 baht per minute. Very easy from any phone you register on your account.

I got my pension and arrears back after two months. There must be a better system than the present one. How do those living from hand to mouth survive with no pension? Fortunately I don't fall into that category.

15 hours ago, Gandtee said:

I got my pension and arrears back after two months. There must be a better system than the present one. How do those living from hand to mouth survive with no pension? Fortunately I don't fall into that category.

I would have thought it highly unlikely that there are many - if any - Brits who are living in Thailand solely on the basis of their (frozen) State Pension income! For example my current monthly State Pension income (as calculated on the basis of the payments I receive every 4 weeks multiplied by 13 and then divided by 12) comes nowhere near the monthly income minima of 65,000 THB and 40,000 THB required for annual retirement and marriage extensions respectively.

 

That said, though, I quite agree with you that there must be better ways of proving that we are still in the land of the living for State Pension purposes than the cumbersome bureaucracy which the DWP insist on inflicting on us every couple of years or so. Unfortunately I fear that we are probably stuck with their current procedures until such time as it dawns on them that we are now nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st - rather than the 19th - Century.

 

Really confusing. In October 2022 I got the following:

 

"Dear Mr Plonker,,

Thank you for your email.

We have suspended the issuing of Life Certificates due to the ongoing global pandemic. This will not affect your UK State Pension."

 

 After spending an hour or two trying one number after another, being put on hold for 15 minutes, giving all my personal details, the lady told me she couldn't get through to Social Security to check up. 

The number was +44 8007 310341