Obtaining proof of UK child benefit cancellation - Germany

Has anyone got any tips on how to convince the lovely people at Child Benefit to send a letter of some sort to prove that we have cancelled Child Benefit?

After 3 months of letters and forms and paperwork back and forth with Kindergeld we got one last week that finally agrees we qualify for Kindergeld as long as we can prove that we have cancelled our Child Benefit in the UK.

I have called the UK office twice and asked for a letter to state that we are no longer getting Ch Ben so that we can send to the lovely people at Kindergeld and the Child Benefit office says that this is against their policy and not something they do. WTF?

Soooooo...anyone ever been able to prove to Kindergeld in any other way that your Ch Ben is cancelled? Or found a way to get the lovely people at HMRC to write a letter of some sort?

Thanks

It's been a long time but in the 90s the DHSS provided the info themselves directly to the Amt here in Germany.
When you leave the UK you (were) supposed to inform the DHSS that you were leaving and you got forms to fill out, one of which dealt with child benefit.

When we started to receive child benefit in Germany they back-dated it to our arrival time here in Germany and also refunded the DHSS in the UK - for payments already given to us in the few months overlap - then gave us the difference (German Kindergeld is more than child benefit in the UK). After that, we received the full payments each month from Germany.

Edit: Did you go this route? You can inform them you are moving abroad even online these days.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/TaxCreditsandChildBenefit/Childbenefits/ChildBenefitandwhoqualifies/DG_173532

Thank you! So I know it is possible at least....!

I'm not sure what DHSS is, perhaps the agency dealing with Ch Ben has changed over the years. We did call Ch Ben and cancel before we left the UK (although that was an ordeal as we had to apply to have it cancelled, prove that we were leaving the country and wait for them to make a decision on whether we were allowed to cancel or not!!! Absurd!) We haven't received it since the month we left England so it is for sure cancelled.

So what you did essentially was to give Kindergeld your (old) Ch Ben number and have them contact HMRC directly to prove that you were no longer claiming in the UK?

I'm also concerned because Kindergeld has told us we only have 10 days to get them this proof....if we can't get it by then does anyone know if that means that we will lose our chance to claim Kindergeld because we weren't sorted in time? We made the initial application for Kindergeld a couple of weeks after we arrived, so it's not like we delayed in applying - just that every time we fill in the paperwork with them we get another letter two weeks later asking for MORE information!

DHSS was the dept dealing with this at that time (Dept of Health and Social Security).

It seems they made a decision so I would expect you to have received written confirmation that they stopped your child benefit. You didn't receive a letter confirming their decision?