Awarded grant, paid, then told it was an error

Dermighty

Repeating 2nd year in college (did year 1 and 2 of a UCC course, not doing year 2 of a CIT course (having completed year 1 last year). I neither applied for nor received a grant before this year (ever).

Applied for a grant in September, got the grant awarded in December/January (forget which exactly), was paid half in a lump sum (last Friday in January), the following month i got my monthly payment (February).

I owed tuition and registration to CIT for 2012-2013, as I'm repeating a year and paid for last semester (ie: September to January). Received a bill for this semester as well as an email from the same fees office saying they owed me a refund of registration and tuition. Contacted them, they never replied. Contacted them repeatedly, never replied (this is CIT I'm referring to). I eventually got through (yesterday) and asked what the hell was going on. They told me that the grants authority (SUSI) was to reply to them and that the reason they had held the refund being sent to my account is that they expected SUSI to tell me I shouldn't have gotten a grant award and that I'd have to pay back the fees/registration refund almost as soon as I'd gotten it.

The very next day SUSI ring me and tell me I was given a grant in error (two months after awarding it, nearly six months after applying), sorry about that, further payments have been frozen and you will have to refund the money paid.

What a f*cking shambles!

mackg

If the course you are doing in CIT is the same level or lower than the one you were doing in UCC then yeah you should have been refused in the first place. It's a pretty horrible situation to be in hope it works out for you.