Appeal refused on (inaccurate) income grounds

I received a letter yesterday telling me that I have been refused ESA on the grounds that I have in excess of £16,000 savings.
The truth is that my husband and myself have nothing like this amount - and if we had - we'd never have bothered applying in the first place! Has anyone else suffered as a result of cock-ups like this - and if so - was the mistake rectified fairly quickly?

Hi Gordon,
I phoned and asked but they could not make a clear comment about it - only that I somehow (apparently)had too much money! I was advised to print off all my financial statements ( as I did 2 months ago) and send them in - which I have done today. I think I will still lodge an official appeal because I truly think that the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. A phone call to them last Friday led me to believe that my claim was being allowed.

You say that the 'appeal' has been refused because of the allegation that you/your husband have more than £16,000 in capital, but when you mention appeal do you actually mean claim?

If it is the latter, then obviously you will know exactly what you wrote on the ESA1 claim form. Did the DWP ask for any proof of capital by way of bank statements etc? If not, unless they have made reference to the generalised matching service whereby they can access via HMRC the amount of interest accrued on individual bank accounts, then it would seem likely that they have made an error?

In any event the DWP would not rely on the GMS alone, and if there was any doubt about the amount of capital pertinent to a claim, they would certainly request evidence of this directly from the claimant before making an adverse decision on these grounds.

In the first instance it would be worthwhile to telephone the JCP office/BD centre who dealt with the claim to find out whether a mistake has been made? If not, you may have to appeal against the adverse decision on your ESA claim, if in fact it is the initial claim to ESA to which you refer, as opposed to an appeal to which you have referred in your post.

Sorry Gordon - I actually meant CLAIM - I fear that the dreaded word 'appeal' is uppermost in my mind at the moment!
I am afraid that the form was a shambles because it took several phone calls (one of which was cut off at their end) speaking with several people before we thought that the information was all correctly entered. They had all sorts of crazy gobbledegook on the form they finally generated - even my GPs address made no logical sense. Anyhow yesterday I did actually ask them whether a mistake had been made - but as I said in my OP- they were just non-committal and asked me to re-submit the bank statements etc (which I have done). I remain completely baffled.