OFFFS (the extra F is for "further")

[cosmolinguist]

When we left our hero, she'd gotten absolutely nowhere in her attempts to claim benefits.

So I finally got around to ringing the number the job centre lady told me I had to -- which turned out to be HMRC, who use a horrible voice-activated thingy to filter your calls to people, which of course didn't understand my accent (wouldn't want to have these foreigners paying taxes now, would we?), not helped by the fact that I had a non-standard issue. But then, don't we all.

Anyway, HMRC didn't see what the problem was; my name and NI number and other details all checked out fine for them, but they did have to update my address, which is probably useful, and said they'd send me a letter confirming my NI number, which will come in handy the next time something like this happens, I suppose.

And then (as I anticipated in my comment to barakta), of course there's no continuity of procedure between bits of the government, so I got to ring up the DWP again to see if I can get anyone to do what the phone call a week ago would have been about had they gotten any further than my sodding NI number.

Which means I was on hold for ages -- the whole time being chastised about how claims made online take preference over claims made over the telephone (so if you don't have the internet you're SOL, I guess!) and stressing that this line was only for [whatever I'd confirmed lately that I wanted, two or three times: yes I am a new claim, yes it is jobseekers' I want -- only to be then asked the same thing again as soon as I got a human on the phone. It's so clear that this system is set up for the ease of the people working in it, not the people using it.

Anyway, this human despite her impenetrably Lancashire accent ("Why do you keep talking like that? What's gone wrong with your accent? You all sound all... English. You've all developed a fault!") definitely told me she can find no record of my claim and I have to start over again.

greyeyedeve will tell you it took a whole afternoon, a lot of help from her, many cups of tea and lots of sarcasm to get me through this process the first time. That I have to do it all over again is just making me tired and sad now.

Comments

[silveradept]

So one agency can find you, but there's no way they can then go over and whomp the other agency over the head so that they can find you? That's great governmental work there.

[mother_bones]

Just seen this *head/desk* Okay, come over when you want too, and we'll conquer this thing. **hugs**

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks lovely. I was thinking of trying to tackle this tomorrow, if that's any good for you? I'd like to at least get the process in motion before Christmas. (I still have the paper with all the passwords and numbers on, too; hopefully we can re-use some of that.)

[mother_bones]

Tomorrow will be fine. We decided at last minute to go see family in Brum but we won't be travelling until later in the evening.

[barakta]

Complaining to the DWP is a thankless task too. I should know, I've resorted to it for a friend and it took about 8 rounds of increasingly patronising GRRness on my part just ot get basic info from them.

I'm about to issue a complaint to the AtW part of the DWP and have warned them I sued their friends HMRC so don't fuck with me earlier this week.

Fuckers the lot of them. Utter fuckers. And of course a great big pile of STEAMING DPA fail if they have no record of your previous app. What ARE they doing to lose so much data? If it is possible in mid-hell to cite the DPA at them it can be one way of smacking them in to slightly less fail... (I smacked AtW with a combo of EA2010 and DPA and they backed right down from some bullshit position).