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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Christopher Knaus and Lorena Allam

AGL thought it was doing welfare recipients a ‘favour’ when refunding money it wrongly collected, court hears

AGL logo
Energy company AGL deliberately designed its automated payment system to wrongly accept welfare money from former customers, the federal court has been told. Photograph: Morgan Hancock/AAP

Energy giant AGL deliberately designed an automated system that wrongly took money from the welfare payments of unwitting former customers and later said it was doing those customers a “favour” by providing refunds, a court has heard.

AGL is being sued in the federal court over its use of the government-run Centrepay system to wrongly take hundreds of thousands of dollars from 483 welfare recipients after they had ceased being its customers.

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