I can feel another letter to Liz Kendall coming on – is this how Universal Credit ‘helps’ people?

This Writer had to sign on to the benefit earlier this year after separating from the now-former Mrs Mike and being told that Vox Political does not currently qualify as “gainful employment” (subscribe to email notifications – see the home page, https://voxpoliticalonline.com – to help improve this situation).

The system relies heavily on its website, with claimants signing in regularly to provide information and deliver updates. For security, a security code is sent to a claimant’s mobile phone or email address, to be input into the website before we can log in.

And that’s fine – unless something breaks.

In my case, the battery on my mobile died last weekend; it ran out of charge and refused to recharge. This meant I could not receive my security code – and I had an important notification to provide; failing to do so would jeopardise my future on the benefit.

There was no way to contact any human being at the Department for Work and Pensions over the weekend so I had to wait until Monday to telephone (via a friend’s landline) and explain the situation.

“Oh, that’s easy,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “All you have to do is take two forms of evidence of identity to your local Job Centre, and they’ll change where the code is sent to your email address.”

Lovely! said I. So I just pop in and they’ll fix it?

“No, you have to make an appointment.” And how do I do that? “I’ll put a message through.”

There was a flurry of typing noises, and then I was told to wait by my computer for an email telling me when to visit the Job Centre.

I stayed in all day and did not receive any email.

So the following day (bearing in mind that time was ticking on), I prevailed upon my friend to let me use their phone again and had another conversation with Universal Credit.

The person on the line this time said they could not say why I had not been contacted but offered to put another message through – and I should wait by my computer for an email.

I stayed in all day – and shortly before 5pm I did indeed receive an email. It said I had a message from Universal Credit… and I should log into the website to read it.

Can you imagine how monumentally stupid it would be if that was notification of my appointment with the Job Centre to sort out my problem logging into the website?

Now I was faced with a dilemma; if I tried to contact UC a third time, would I achieve anything? I had no way of knowing whether the email was about this, or whether I had not been contacted about it at all.

And time was ticking on.

On Wednesday, I decided not to bother calling; it had achieved nothing – and I had a regular weekly meeting at the Job Centre the following day anyway. I couldn’t see any likelihood of getting an appointment before then, so it seemed more reasonable to wait – even though, as I may have mentioned, time was ticking on.

So we come to Thursday, when I finally got to sit in front of my advisor. And guess what?

“Oh! You should have just come in,” he said. “Some offices are strict about this, but we aren’t. You could have just said to security that you didn’t have an appointment but did have an emergency, and someone would have come and helped you – unless we were really busy.”

So I had been put through four-and-a-half days of stress, and forced to wait indoors rather than getting on with my life, for no reason. How would you have felt, if you had been messed around like that?

I don’t blame anybody at my local Job Centre. They had been given no idea that I was in difficulty – no message had been received as a result of my phone calls (according to what I was told).

So it seems that somebody in the DWP’s Universal Credit unit had taken a decision not to help me fix my contact problem and to allow me to face possible penalties, despite having done everything required of me to make them aware of it.

Is that incompetence? Or is it outright malice?

Oh, and when I looked on the UC website, I found out that the message about which I had been emailed on Tuesday was a warning – that I needed to provide the information that had been requested or my payments could be affected.

Well, that information has gone, and we’ll see what happens when I’m due to be paid later this month.

In the meantime, I’m considering what to do about this.

It seems clear that there is a fault in the Universal Credit system – and that it may be a deliberate effort to harm claimants.

So I shall probably write another letter to Liz Kendall.

Shall I contact some of my friends in the national press, as well?

---

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here: