UC childcare costs nightmare

[Scaredofdwp]

I’m convinced UC are trying to send us to an early grave. We’ve been migrated from tax credit childcare and are still in our five week wait time.

They keep telling us the evidence we have for childcare isn’t enough. We’ve given invoices, bank statements, letters from the childcare provider, registration numbers and screenshots and it’s never enough. The date of invoice being made up and date of direct debit received didn’t line up so we needed to show other proof of payment. The system our childcare provider uses (some early years management app) lists a name different to the childcare provider on our bank statements and the processing time between the direct debit being taken and payment accepted on the bloody app /invoice is always a couple of days out and apparently that isn’t acceptable. I don’t know what to do. I can’t demand the people working on the app change their practices to suit bloody Betty from UC.

Childcare provider says no one else claiming UC using their services and the same app, has had the same problems we have. They’re very helpful but getting annoyed as us going back with new requirements and formats for the same information they and we have already provided.

The absolutely unhelpful UC person keeps leaving sarcastic messages on our journal asking us to fill out the information again and again is, imo is extremely unprofessional but she holds all the power. She asks for the same information to be uploaded multiple times as she claims fault with what we’ve already uploaded. This involves filling out the childcare claim form online, uploading the evidence we have already given them and then she complains and threatens us that we can be charged with fraud for submitting duplicate claims even although we’re just trying to respond yet again to her poorly written and confusing messages asking for the same I formarion. The system doesn’t allow to upload without filling out the form again. I’ve kept screenshots of all the journal messages in case hers disappear. We cannot win.

We’ve not even had our first payment yet. Final straw was an email requesting all this information yet again (the second time today) after 5.30pm this time with something additional we cannot get now until next Monday at the earliest, to be submitted by close of business today (ie 6pm) This is impossible. She’s setting us up to fail.

is this normal behaviour we just have to accept from DWP, or has she got it in for us?

Sorry I can't help it your query but I do claim child childcare costs through UC and never have any issues at all? I don't pay by direct debit though.
Invoice from nursery arrives.. I pay via bank transfer to the nursery, screen shot my invoice and proof of payment receipt from my Internet banking, then upload both to UC. If the direct debit is causing the dates to be mismatched, can you just do it this way?

We used to transfer but when they moved to a management system they instigated the direct debit system and don’t allow any other payment methods. We did ask as we didn’t want yet another bloody app to track.

You can upload files in the journal as opposed to through the childcare section.
she’s probably not explaining it sufficiently and assuming you know how to use it.

i would call and ask them to be explicit in what they want.

i had a nightmare with my son’s school app for showing childcare. Not what we’ve used just that he’s registered.
so asked for the info that’s on the school website on letter head and this was sufficient then I screenshot the dates on the app.

They are absolutely uesless and have staff who don't understand even the basics of invoicing and accounting. They appear to be incapable of understanding, for example, that a weekly invoice will not mean that a nanny worked every day during the invoice period. They don't understand that their system specifically asks you to enter the date you paid the invoice and that the receipt will show the date the childcare provider received the cleared funds on their account, and that it may be correct for these dates to be different. I'm not sure what they want, a thesis on how the banking system operates?

The only way to get it resolved will be to raise a formal complaint by emailing [email protected] and making a formal complaint, and then hoping that you get someone marginally more intelligent dealing with the complaint (doubtful, I'm afraid).

I have never spoken to such dense people in my entire life.

It's also an egregious misuse of resources to harrass people who are working (hence submitting childcare costs) rather than spending their time on getting those who are not working back into work.

I even had one intellectually challenged individual rejecting invoices from one of my nannies because I had entered the total invoice amount minus the expenses it contained, i.e. only the cost of the childcare. This imbecile demanded that I resubmit the invoice and enter the full amount per the invoice, which would be fraudulent as clearly expenses aren't eligible for their contributions to the costs. When I pointed out that the error was in her basic reading abilities her solution was that I should spend more of my time resubmitting it all so that she could correct her error.

Nope. Not my problem. I've fulfilled the legal requirements and provided all relevant documentation. Your error, you fix it.

They are all braindead.

How can you upload files in the journal? I thought you can only do that if they send you a link?

Could you ask the nursery to write a letter/do a statement of your payments that explains all this? It sounds like a nightmare so I hope you get it sorted soon