To complain to Universal credit?

[NeedUCAdviceplease]

Morning all,

I'm really upset, frustrated and worried.

I recieve my universal credit on 15th every month.
The statement usually comes out a few days before. This month it said check on 11th July so I checked on Friday, which was 11th and it wasn't there. Thinking it was just delayed, I left it until yesterday (14th) and it still wasn't there but was still saying "your statement will be ready on 11th July, check back then"

I started to worry that I wasn't going to get paid so I called UC at 12:15pm yesterday. I was told that something is blocking my payment, but he can't tell me what, he sent a message to the caseworker and then told me someone will get back to me by 6pm the next day??!!
I started to panic because I have loads of direct debits, including my rent coming out in the morning. He said, don't worry, it probably won't be 6pm, that's just deadline.
I woke up this morning and sicovered I haven't been paid, no information at all showing on my journal. I called again at 8am and was spoken to very snippily and told I would know by 6pm.

Surely this isn't a fair way for them to treat me? No explanation, no payment, no statement, nothing in my to-do list. If I hadn't called, I probably wouldn't know anything about not getting paid today.
Surely they should have told me at the end of the assessment period if there was a problem, instead of leaving me in the lurch like this? I have no shopping money and my landlord is already chasing the rent as its always in his account fist thing.
I really can't wait until 6pm, I have lots I need to do and buy today, I need shopping for dinner tonight.
Should I complain?

Peopld who want to bash benefit claimants need not apply. I am not interested in your judgements, you don't know me or my circumstances, I will not rise to it.

Yeah exactly right it's not like harrassing one receptionist at a small business she won't end up with the same agent twice

No advice but plenty of solidarity. Can you link me to this credit card when you get a chance please, I'm in a very similar situation.

But what on earth is it going to achieve?

She’ll repeatedly be told the same thing.
It’s been escalated and have to wait for the case manager to explain what the reason is.

Next working day is not an unreasonable timescale.

OP should have left journal message as soon as the statement was supposed to be there.

Hi OP, I hope you have heard something by now and you get paid.

Have you recently moved over to UC from other benefits? I know a few people who have and their payments just stopped, and they had to chase it up.
Or you had something in your to do list that you might have missed. Lots of reviews going on right now and not doing them can delay payments too.

YANBU OP. But, it's possible someone wasn't able to get back to you. The entirety of the UC computer systems was down today. To the point over 200 people in my dept spent 9 hours twiddling our thumbs at our desks today because we couldn't get into the systems. We all missed important calls, messages and deadlines.

There were problems yesterday but not everyone was affected. I'm dreading tomorrow if it's not fixed yet. Even the UC helpline wasn't able to do anything other than emergencies today because we can't access anything. Can you possibly get an emergency OD from your bank? I don't know how many days this will go on for, but I highly doubt it'll be fixed by end of day tomorrow.

I asked for a mandatory Reconsideration on 25 March they’ve not even replied to that. Absolute shambles of an organisation

Hope you got it sorted and have now received your payment

I can’t believe I only just thought of this @NeedUCAdviceplease but most local councils do provide some kind of hardship grant could you look that up?

A link for England https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/benefits/emergency_grants_loans_and_money_help#help-from-your-local-council and if in Scotland it is also available x

https://www.mygov.scot/scottish-welfare-fund/crisis-grants

This happened to me once OP

Turns out I had not seen a message to log onto my account by a certain date (6 days before the payment due in my case) to inform them of any earnings I may have had that month

I receive UC, and this month they are seemingly making checks and have requested bank statements and payslips for last 4 months, plus photo id. I had to send this in within a couple of weeks else payment would be held. They have requested same info from a colleague too, so perhaps it is linked to that - but they failed to tell you so in your journal via the normal email notification alert?

check your To Do list!

I know this doesn't help now, but for the future (because I've been there)

I always had my direct debits go straight out too, now I've opened a separate account, put all my "spending" money in there and then leave the rest for thise regular expenses to come out about a week later.

I've worked for various payrolls and these kind of thing happen all the time with people's wages also.
It's worrying as hell and causes a lot of frustration but it's one of those things, there's always an element of human error or system error that can happen. A lot of the time people are then given a BACS payment which they receive 3 days later.
Hopefully you have received the information and payment ASAP, you can request a letter to confirm a late payment to give to your bank to recoup and failed DD fees.

Er, I work full-time without UC. I have still been impacted by payroll cock-ups and computer system errors, which caused delays in wage payments.

How did it go? Did you get your money?

Morning all, just to update you all that I did actually get my payment yesterday morning at 11am after a journal update

Apparently an "outstanding" to-do was blocking my payment... but this to-do was concerning my education and it had a due date of 3rd September??!! So I have no idea why it blocked my payment and I've had no explanation, much less an apology.
I have at least managed to go shopping and pay my bills.
Thank you all for advice.

I was thinking that too

At least you know now NEVER to leave anything in your ‘to-do’ list. It’s clearly a deliberate software action to block any payments to anyone who has stuff left to do in their list

It's not something that I can provide until after my student loan has been approved and I know I'm starting my course. It's impossible for me to have completed it and the deadline isn't until September. So there really wasn't anything I could have done and it shouldn't have been blocked with a deadline like that and without saying anything to me.

not great, yes, but how is it unfair?

Unfair she was left without money when it was expected.

Glad you got your payment. Personally i think you have had some harsh replies when people don’t know your complete circs. UC are terrible and have made numerous mistakes in my claim/payments. For the judgy people i work a professional job, own my own home via mortgage just got high childcare bill so rely on UC as a top up.

I’ve had errors where they’ve missed off adding on childcare, they once calc’d a random low amount of childcare, i got given a jobcentre app within my working day and took me 3 journal questions all ignored and a lengthy phone call to rearrange the app to a more suitable time to turn up to appointment for the advisor to say why exactly has this appointment been made and then they apologised for wasting my time. I find the advisors to be rude when i’ve called to query something.

Whatever your reason for claiming UC they should be processing your claim correctly.

Still not unfair