To send a formal complaint?

[complainornott]

I've had a bad experience with a university, and am considering complaining but I don't know if the stress of the situation is clouding my judgement. I've tried to be as condense as possible but my post is still quite long, apologies. The gist of it though if you don't want to read to the end is that when contacting a university's admissions team about my application they have been rude on several occasions.

I applied to a university through UCAS through clearing. You can only apply to one course at a time, and once you've applied you can't cancel or withdraw your application whilst it is pending - you either have to wait for a rejection or wait for an offer that you can then decline. I want to withdraw my application, as I have another course that I want to add to my UCAS application instead.

I contacted UCAS who said that the university needs to release me, they can't do it on their end. I then contacted the university who told me that they have no record of my application, and that I need to tell UCAS that and ask them to withdraw it. I then spoke to UCAS who told me the university will definitely have received a copy of my application, and implied that the university has a bad reputation for this kind of mix-up. I've been going back and forth between the two all week to not resolve.

The university have handled the whole thing quite poorly. I've used their live chats on their website and they are rude and give partial responses. For example, I wrote a message saying 'Hello, I need to speak to someone about having my clearing application withdrawn please' and they just responded 'u can do that yourself' and then disconnected, which is incorrect. I've rang up and spoke to several different people and most of them have been rude, hanging up the phone on me or telling me to ring back the next day as they told me that they don't want to sort it out today as it's late (it was 3pm, and their lines close at 5pm). They have been argumentative on the phone, insisting that I haven't submitted an application even though I have (and have emailed over screenshots and my applicant ID to prove it) and implying it's my fault.

WIBU to complain about the way they've handled things?

Just bumping to see if anyone has any advice

I would focus on getting onto a course rather than complaining. If they don’t have your application, can you not just apply to the other one?

Unfortunately I can’t. You can only apply to one course on UCAS at a time and I can’t remove the application myself and neither can UCAS. Only the university can remove it

Is the university close to home? If so, I'd go and speak to someone in person.

They're busy at the moment and you should have considered your application and all your options before applying.

It’s just frustrating how they seem to have just lost my application, so even if I wanted to go to that course I’d be unable to as they can’t see any application leaving me unable to apply for anything else for this year due to UCAS’ limit. I’ve not done anything wrong, I’ve applied through the proper channels after speaking to the admissions team and now I’m stuck.

The quickest way to resolve this will be to try to find someone senior in the admissions dept who can sort this. Can you Google or check on LinkedIn?
Formal complaints process will have a timeline for investigation and getting back to you and you need to get this sorted ASAP! If you cant get hold of them then try tweeting the uni or similar as the Comms team may be more responsive.
Alternatives would be to call back this morning and be calm and not argumentative but be clear - either you resolve this now on the call or please pass me to your supervisor. If they refuse or hang up then make a record of times and names and then call back and tell them that you are noting all this down and you will be reporting through the formal process so please pass me through to your supervisor.
Good luck

I would ask the university to provide something in writing saying they haven’t got your application and then use that to push UCAS.

It sounds like UCAS has a way to correct things but would need concrete proof from the university.

I got through on the phone, they asked for my UCAS ID and said they’d have a look and then put the phone down. Whenever I ask to take their name they won’t give it but I’m noting down times at least. I’m being calm and polite on the phone, I’m not a rude or argumentative person.

Phone back and say "sorry I think I got cut off"

Tweet them?

I'm a university lecturer and if our admissions team were treating applicants like this I'd want to know about it.
I would contact the degree programme director of the course you've applied for and outline the issues you've been having.

I'd contact the admin team in the academic department, contact details should be on their website.

I'd google admissions manager for the university and email them directly.

Agree with others here. On the online chat you've probably got an hourly paid student helper. Most university departments are really good at putting everyone up on the website. Find someone senior in the Admissions Office for that department and contact them. You can decide whether or not to do a formal complaint later. For now, just get it sorted. Good luck

I've been on the phone pretty much all morning and not sure I've got anywhere. A lot of the advisors on the phone don't understand that with Clearing it is the university that has to release the applicant, and that there's nothing I can do on my end (unless they give an offer that I can then reject).

One advisor was taking down all my details and I thought we were getting somewhere, I was on hold for about 30 minutes in total, only for it to turn out she's put an application in for me rather than cancelled my existing application! At least the application now shows on their system so hopefully it will link with my UCAS ID and get somewhere.

I've been given a random email address to email but when Googling it I can't find out if it's even a correct address or which department it's for so not sure if I've just emailed it out into the void.

I think they've outsourced their admissions team to overseas and that's where some of the issues are arising.

I've found the head of admissions on LinkedIn so I'm going to try and find out his email address. There's no email addresses for administrators on the university website, only the Head of School or the lecturers who I would rather not bother with this.

Op are you getting confirmation from these unis before you're adding them? When you apply direct through clearing you only add a course once the university has given you permission (like pre acceptance). Thats why you can only do one at a time.

Sorry if you already knew that but I wasn't sure you'd had that contact with them from the run around you've been given!

Yeah, I had been told by someone in the university's team to apply through clearing after they asked for all my grades and qualifications. I think they were wrong to say this though judging by how it's all panned out lol.

After a whole day of being on the phone, speaking on the live chats and emailing different departments I've made no progress at all.

What uni is it? I've seen quite a few uni staff answering queries in WIWIKAU so might be worth asking there.

I'd go and turn up there - which university is it? They sound absolutely useless.