Preferences for concession cards 101-06060010

Details of any current or historical card preferences can be viewed on the Concession Card Preference Summary (CCPS) screen.

Concession preferences remain in place until manually removed. Please advise customers that they will need to request preferences to be removed when no longer required. Staff should not create or amend a concession card preference without the consent of the customer.

Only legal names of the cardholder and any dependents will display on concession cards.

Due to the physical (wallet) size of concession cards there are set naming conventions that are applied when cards are printed:

• Pensioner Concession Card (PCC) and most Health Care Cards (HCC) display the names of:
• the card holder
• any partner, and
• dependent children (only partner may be supressed)
• Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) display the card holder name only
• Ex-Carer Allowance (child) Health Care Card (EHC) display the ex-Carer Allowance child name only
• Foster Child Health Care Card (FST) display the foster child name only

See the Resources page for naming conventions.

Concession cards will be printed with the customer’s home address (HOM) and will be mailed to the customer's postal address (POS) by default. This can be changed if the customer requests a preference to print or deliver using an alternative address.

Where a customer has more than one address recorded on the Centrelink computer system (for example, a term address), they can:

• nominate a preference as to which address should be shown on the concession card, and
• choose to have the card mailed to an address other than the default postal address

Allowable addresses include:

• home
• postal
• temporary, and
• term

Customers can also ask to not print (suppress) the address on the card.

When discussing address suppression with customers, tell them that not displaying their address on their concession card may cause problems when they want to claim concessions from certain types of concession providers. Some concession providers require a residential address to be on a card to grant a concession. Importantly, for example, concessions on council rates or state government subsidies may only be given to residents of certain areas.

Note: When a customer updates their address details it is important to check the recorded address preferences because many payments will provide an automatically issued card.

An address preference will override the normal default delivery address of the card. Concession preferences remain in place until manually removed. Preferences can be removed if the customer wants their card to be delivered to their default postal address.

Cards display the first name and surname of the card holder and partner (where applicable), and the first name only of any dependent children (where applicable). As there are different types of cards available, the names displayed on the card differ from one card to another. Cards are limited to the character lengths. If the number of characters exceed the limit, some letters may be truncated. See the Resources page for more information.

Customers may choose whether their partner's details appear on the concession card, such as for privacy reasons.

Any concessions offered to the concession card holder may also apply to other individuals named on the card. However, access to concessions is at the discretion of the provider. For a customer to access concessions for their partner, they will generally need to present the concession card displaying their partner's details.

Customers who already have a concession card of their own and take on the care of a foster child may choose to suppress the:

• display of the child's address details on the Foster Child Health Care Card (FST), or
• delivery of the FST

These options are available as preferences for concession cards.

Customers will automatically receive the concession card associated with their priority concession. A priority concession card is the card that will generally provide the customer with the most concessions. If the customer is entitled to both a Pensioner Concession Card (PCC) and Health Care Card (HCC), the PCC is the card that will be issued to the customer.

To receive a non-priority card, the customer must request that card be delivered. They can choose to have the card delivered as:

• a one-off issue, or
• an ongoing automatic issue

Where the customer receives no advantage over the benefits afforded by their existing card, Service Officers should explain this to the customer.

Note: if the customer insists on also receiving the non-priority card, it should be issued.

A customer can choose to have delivery of a concession card suppressed. This may be to:

• stop the delivery of a non-priority card that is being delivered on a continuous (automatic) basis, or
• suppress the issue of the concession card associated with their priority concession