Does anyone know how to go about lodging a complaint with UC? I know they’re notorious for f*cking people over so assumed they’d have a number or email but I can’t seem to find it.
Basically, we are on a low income at the moment (I work 2 p/t jobs, partner works full time). UC started rolling out in our area so we applied due to my partner currently not getting overtime at work due to a contract change so we’re struggling a little financially, got told we were eligible, had our interview etc. We had to wait until 10th May before we found out anything about our payments and we were told we would be entitled to £158 this month (£208 but we had to take out half the advance for rent so paying back £50 p/m for that) based on what we both earned last month. However they said they were taking £149 for a tax credit overpayment (which we were not aware of, having spoken to tax credits since they can only tell us it’s from 2014 but not why/how there was an overpayment).
On 10th, as soon as we found out we would only be getting £9 of our entitled £158, my partner called the debt helpline and said we couldn’t afford such a large repayment at the moment. The man told us that was fine and arranged for us to pay a much smaller amount for the next 6 months, to then be re-evaluated. He said if this information wasn’t processed before our payment date (16th) and we only received £9, to call back to arrange to have the difference refunded.
16th came and we only got £9 so we called back to be told that the money had been sent to HMRC and we would have to wait 24 hours for it to process on their side before they could refund and to call back the next day. So we called back the next day to be told there’s no such thing as a refund and we were misinformed and that we should have called before 10th to give them enough time to sort things out, which we couldn’t have done because we were only told on 10th what our payments would be.
My partner was pretty annoyed at this point, we had been told twice that the money, which we had now budgeted for, would be given back to us and now it came to light that wasn’t the case. He called back again today just to see what was going on, why we’d been told this etc. The woman was extremely patronising and rude. She also said there was no notes to say we had ever called and the reduced 6 month repayment plan that had been “arranged” on 10th was also not noted down at all.
So not only are we £100ish down despite actually being eligible for more, we have been lied to twice about a refund AND not one advisor has made any notes of our queries or the repayment plan that had apparently been set up for us.
I don’t tend to complain but we’ve had nothing but shoddy customer service and as a result, are now left a lot shorter than we have budgeted for. Before this, we were receiving £4 a week in tax credits (and apparently repayments were being taken from us every week, something else we weren’t informed about, we were only told that’s what we were eligible for) and we were struggling on that as it was, £16 a month isn’t really very much, but getting £9 a month, we are even worse off now. We both work very hard and could just do with a bit of help. I don’t think it’s right the way we’ve been dealt with and all of the misinformation regarding payments. I know a complaint won’t get us the money back but I just want to inform them that their service is absolutely crap just because I’m really annoyed to be honest!