Can I claim expenses from a recruitment agency?

[user1471867483]

I'm currently unemployed and have been for four months now and claiming job seekers allowance. I was delighted an agency found a temporary job for me. However, I sat for 45 minutes waiting for the reporting manager to collect me from the reception area, but no one heard of him! It later transpired the agency had sent me to the wrong address and demanded I go to the correct address immediately. Well, it was in the opposite direction to where I should've been and I wouldn't have been able to get to the correct address in time. I paid four bus fares too. Can I claim travel expenses and that hour I was hanging around? I wasn't impressed with this agency and a poor start with them. I did ask if I'd be paid (what I've put here on this), but he said 'only if I start the job at the correct location'. Isn't that blackmail?

Do you want the other job, the one at the location you should have been sent to?

Generally you won't get paid to attend interviews. The agency might give you a goodwill gesture to reimburse public transport costs given it was their error but that would only be at their discretion. I did once pay for a candidate's travel but they had to fly over 600 miles! I hope you get the job, good luck.

I don’t think it was for an interview, it was for work?

OP you may as well ask but be prepared to write it off. I’ve had agencies / companies I temped for do shit / questionable things and there’s not a lot you can do about it, neither the agency not company care.

You can try. But they might drop you as a client.

I manage a recruitment company and if we’d sent you to entirely the wrong place, we’d pay for your transport as you’ve lost earnings by not being able to work that day.

If however the manager at the correct site was happy to wait for you, I’d pay your transport there but then not home, as you wouldn’t have lost your day pay rate, but would have lost the additional travel cost of going between the two.

I dropped them first! If they can't get the location right, they might not get my pay right. It works both ways. They made a very bad first impression and I've taken it as a red flag. I'll try another agency.