More DWP Fuckwittedness
Well, ok, this might just be the Post Office instead, at least in part.
Due to my Incapacity Benefit being stopped upon failure of that Personal Capability Assessment my Income Support was also stopped, but I could, and did, ask to be put on an emergency rate of it given the appeal with Incapacity. Now, as part of this I had to update them on income, which included telling them about fussycat's fortuitous 'new' (it backdates to 25 November 2005 when the claim was originally made, but we didn't start receiving anything until this September) income.
As always they actually wanted 2 payslips/proofs of income, not least in this case because the first one has the back-dated lump sum mixed up in it and thus doesn't explicitly state the net amount she'll be receiving per month. So, they sent us a letter some weeks back asking for the October payslip. Once we received that we copied it (knowing we'd need the original for other things) and sent that off in the pre-addressed, pre-paid envelope Income Support had provided.
Today we got a second letter from Income Support asking for that payslip. So, being magically in a well enough state to handle phone calls, I phoned them. No, they hadn't received the copy we sent. The suggestion, to be sure, was to present it at the local office (they use Jobcentre Plus offices for this). They kindly gave me the phone number to make an appointment. No, you can't just turn up, even if it's for something simple like this, appointment only.
Of course now said phone number is engaged on first try, and no doubt will be on many subsequent tries. I'd much prefer they just allowed walkins, even if that meant having to turn up early in the morning to guarantee being seen that day. There's no queue system on the phone line, although if there was I'd be cussing about the cost even at local rates, so you just have to keep on redialling periodically. No, I don't trust their system to handle a BT callback correctly either.
Due to my Incapacity Benefit being stopped upon failure of that Personal Capability Assessment my Income Support was also stopped, but I could, and did, ask to be put on an emergency rate of it given the appeal with Incapacity. Now, as part of this I had to update them on income, which included telling them about fussycat's fortuitous 'new' (it backdates to 25 November 2005 when the claim was originally made, but we didn't start receiving anything until this September) income.
As always they actually wanted 2 payslips/proofs of income, not least in this case because the first one has the back-dated lump sum mixed up in it and thus doesn't explicitly state the net amount she'll be receiving per month. So, they sent us a letter some weeks back asking for the October payslip. Once we received that we copied it (knowing we'd need the original for other things) and sent that off in the pre-addressed, pre-paid envelope Income Support had provided.
Today we got a second letter from Income Support asking for that payslip. So, being magically in a well enough state to handle phone calls, I phoned them. No, they hadn't received the copy we sent. The suggestion, to be sure, was to present it at the local office (they use Jobcentre Plus offices for this). They kindly gave me the phone number to make an appointment. No, you can't just turn up, even if it's for something simple like this, appointment only.
Of course now said phone number is engaged on first try, and no doubt will be on many subsequent tries. I'd much prefer they just allowed walkins, even if that meant having to turn up early in the morning to guarantee being seen that day. There's no queue system on the phone line, although if there was I'd be cussing about the cost even at local rates, so you just have to keep on redialling periodically. No, I don't trust their system to handle a BT callback correctly either.