Universal Credit - Is it really as bad as my experience seems to suggest

[warwick65]

I am just wondering if the roll out of UC is really as bad as my experience seems to suggest. I am lucky enough not to be in dire need of a payment and am aware they do emergency payments but here are a few of the problems i have found

Supposedly everything is done online apart from your appointments with your 'job coach' however, they send you messages asking questions but do not provide a means or give you a way of answering those questions. Another is they send you a message asking for evidence but do not actually provide a means for you to upload that evidence . Both of these mean you have to go into the job centre and either make an appointment or hope someone is free to see you. When you get a fit note, you need to upload it but then you need to take the bloody thing in to be verified- what was wrong with the old version when you just posted it off.

Added to that , they seem to have increased the % of any earnings they use for deducting HB, although I may be wrong

It drives me crazy and i can only feel sorry for those people in imminent need of help.

[Davman]

Yes it is as bad as they say. When I first signed onto Universal Credit it took them 7 weeks to pay me. I them had to put fit notes for 21 months. I was not given a work capacity assessment until 17 months after I first signed on. After the work capacity assessment, it took them a further 3 months to tell me that I have limited capacity for work and work related activity. Both my job coaches were fine with me, but I think that was down to my age and the fact that even though I was ill, I was still trying to better myself at college.

[jaguarsuk]

Yes it is that bad.

I was talking to a chap on Twitter who was sanctioned £40 for being late to his UC appointment, he was late due to the job interview he was having overrunning.

I already viewed UC as a punishment on it's claimants and stories such as this chaps just confirm it to me.

It is my honest belief it is designed to punish people and make them so desperate they will literally take any work that gets them off it, then be so terrified of being in that position again they'll do anything not to be.

It's a vile way to treat people and it's designers are evil.