AIBU to try to claim this money?

[lockdownlows]

I work in a school and have underlying health conditions, so I've been working from home since 19th March.

Part of my tasks from home involve calling multiple parents, for welfare checks, to find out who were keyworkers and needed childcare, sorting out free school meal requests etc etc.

I was using my landline, as I didn't want to accidentally give my mobile number to parents, and I thought we had a free call package. We don't... The bill for last month is now £116, because it's all daytime calls, mostly to mobiles.

I don't have a choice about making the calls. They have to be done. I don't know whether to just suck it up and pay the calls myself, because I made the mistake about using my landline, or ask for compensation from school.

YABU- It's my fault, should have checked the package. Do not claim the money from school.

YANBU- Claim the money.

You can ask School, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to but they may have neither the funds nor the mechanism to repay you

You're perfectly entitled to reclaim the expenses. It doesn't matter that you mobile had free calls, you could have easily not had a mobile at all.

Claim the money. You shouldn't have to pay for the privilege of doing your job for them. They really should provide you with a specific mobile phone for your job if you need to call people as an essential part of it.

I’d ask. Presumably they’re not using the school's phone so often.

YANBU to claim expenses.

Although moving forward, you could always just hide your mobile number in settings when you’re working, or dial 141 before the number and your number will be withheld.

Claim this time, but as @NamasteAtHome says going forward use 141 before the number.

Did they agree they would pay expenses? It's worth asking but don't be surprised if they say no.

Also it's possible to not share your mobile number on outgoing calls, or there might even be a setting on your phone:

On a UK land-line, you put 141 before dialling the number.

On a UK mobile phone, on some phones, 141 before the number also works.

However, it does not work on ALL mobile phones. On some, you should use #31# instead

Our staff working from home can claim £10 per month for using personal mobiles
Most have unlimited packages anyway (a lot of young people with fancy phones etc, no families to pay for)
The money was confirmed before they used their phones so was upfront so I guess you should have asked in advance however there’s no harm asking now, I suspect a school won’t have the funds though ☹️

Definitely claim. If your job involves calling people they should be providing you with the means to do that, or covering any costs you incur.

Unless you already told them that you'd expect them to pay YABU.
If you had warned them that you wouldn't be using your mobile, but your landline which will cost, they'd have probably bought you a £10 Sim only deal that had unlimited minutes (and not your mobile number).
£116 is horrendously expensive, and I'd begrudge the school budget paying a phone bill that high, when the cost of a cheap phone and a sim card is around £20.

Granted I don’t work in a school but my work are paying all expenses like that/postage etc. YANBU.

I'm doing a similar role but we are told we are strictly forbidden to contact the student by phone. All contact is to be done via email which I think is alot more sensible, although you don't always get a reply very soon!

Also they should have made it very clear to you about whether to use a mobile/landline and any expenses. If they expected you to use a mobile they should have provided you with a school one

Martin Lewis money show last night said you can reclaim expenses for working from home if you wouldn't normally incur them.
That's phone, heat, water, etc.

You can either claim from your employer, or fill in the P87 form to claim direct from the HMRC (gives your employer less to do).

If you have receipts you can claim the full value, however, you can claim £4 per month without receipts, or form the new tax year (Sunday) you can claim £6 per month.

How much have you saved on petrol by not having to drive to school?

Probably not £116!

Of course you should ask for the cost to be covered. You're working for free if you don't!

Can you change your phone service to include unlimited daytime calls for a lot less than £116 and claim that?

I'd have to use a landline anyway because I don't have a usable mobile signal in my house and I've tried all the networks.

I think you should pay as you should have checked the landline call plan or used free mobile minutes.

You can either

1. block your mobile no showing so that it shows as private to everyone or
2. You can type a no (141 or #31#) before any individual calls that you want to be private.

I wouldn’t claim. Because that’s an unreasonable amount and you didn’t need to run up that bill.

I work in a school, and this is exactly the sort of thing that our headteacher would expect people to claim for, as nobody should be out of pocket for doing their job. And you did need to run up that bill, because school directed you to make those calls and didn't provide a school mobile to use.

Even if you'd used call allowances from your mobile phone, that still isn't free, as you have to pay your mobile phone contract.

I upgraded my phone package to involve all the extra calls I'd be making. Cost about £10 a month. Sorry I think you were at fault on this one.

@Inertia but should the school be charged for someone choosing the most expensive way to do a job? I wouldn’t claim because it wouldn’t feel right to take money from a school. The OP could have done her job without incurring these costs. Even if she charged the school for the total cost of a mobile phone contract for a month, it wouldn’t come to the amount she wants to claim now.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I agree that it's my fault for not double-checking the landline Ts&Cs and claiming the money from school doesn't sit well with me. However, it's still a lot of money to pay out when I have no choice but to make these calls from home.

I will talk to my boss about what we do from now, and just absorb this cost for my error, I think.

If it helps businesses can pay £6.00 expenses tax free to all people working from home.