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Just had my first experience of contacting job centre plus! After 28 years I have been made redundant, naturally first thought was better register for work and benefits. Has anyone else noticed that this department has an attitude problem? I've been dealing with members of the public for many years and trust me, if I had spoken to my customers this way I would have been severely reprimanded or sacked!
First, thought I would pop in to the local job centre and met by two security guards and two members of staff having deep meaningful conversation and unfortunately they did not notice me until I interrupted. Before the words were out of my mouth I had a scrappy bit of paper thrust at me with 2 telephone numbers on. I asked if I could not just browse for a job but apparently "It doesn't work like that any more???" Customers must ring first. So I did and made an appointment.
However, my daughter had last minute interview for university (only told us today), so had to rearrange appointment. I telephoned the 0800 number to be "told off"as this was for new claims. I advised them this was a new claim but seemingly because an appointment had been arranged it was now not a new claim (sorry mind reading head was not working should have realised!). I was told to use 0845 number for local job centre. When I rang 0845 number they told me I should be contacting local job centre? Hang on there, this was the number given! Anyway they put me through to someone else and they couldn't rearrange the appointment either and I'd have to speak to correct department.
Finally got through to right department to be told off again as I was supposed to be ready and available for work and should not be thinking of taking a child to a university meeting (probably best to send 17 year old 150 miles away on own for 4 days - really very safe?).
Trust me, if out of the 18 jobs I have applied for in the last 2 weeks one kindly offers me an interview of position during these 4 days I will accept it and gladly return for it! I think after 28 years being made redundant on 4th of the month and having meeting with job centre on 9th (5 days) should be within the realms of acceptability! If I was still in a job I'm sure I would have been allowed to take these few days as holiday entitlement.
During those 28 years I have continued working and had 4 children and been the main earner. So my first experience of being a benefit claimant has so far been a nightmare, not my favourite experience being spoken to as if I was dog dirt! I now feel strongly that maybe certain people within job centre should relinquish their positions and give them to genuine customer focused people like myself who are out there now looking for work through no fault of their own!.
Well thanks all - nice to rant and get this off my chest. Don't really feel much better though, must be all the forms they have sent me that I now need to complete. Somehow I feel like I have committed a serious crime being made redundant after all these years and they are there to make life as hard, complicated and unpleasant as possible.
By: Customer Focused?
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But, as for the £130 million benefits payout........dream on, it's already being spent on those repairs to the Houses of Parliament and refurbishing MP's offices. Not to mention topping up their pension pots. Also, how do you think they got all that money for all those Police officers taking early retirement?
Send him back send him back his benefits policies are getting crushed !
Lol
Maybe send him to Poland ??
High Court rules emergency laws breach the right to a fiar trial
Government passed legislation to shore up back-to-work scheme
Jobless were told to take an unpaid placement or lose benefits
Cait Reilly, 24, took the government to court over job in poundland
GO BACK TO SCOTLAND IAN YOUR A FOOL WHO JUST GOT SERVED !
Loving it pay day for everyone that has been bullied by Iian Duncan smith & his sham policy
Get myself on the sick. Very professional I'm sure. Now we can penalise the unemployed in Britain all day long and turn them into performing monkeys but that doesn't create jobs does it? I get angry as f¥ck when I see people like that "fungi" piece of dog sht on "Benefits Street" but I am certain people like that are in the minority (thank Christ). Point is blaming unemployment on the unemployed is a bit like the guy from the bible who had the ocean flogged. I'm sure it made him feel a bit better about his failure, but it doesn't achieve anything. F¥cking with peoples jsa just pushes up crime/anti social behaviour. If my woman and her kid need food and I have no money, you best believe that one way or another I will be getting food. This is how America became so violent. Let's not follow them down that road to social hell. Be like Sweden. Really high taxes, and a awesome welfare state that really looks out for it's people. Kick everybody off the dole and you'll see a spree of crime in this country never before seen. Being unemployed is spirit crushing. Nobody wants to go to the government cap in hand begging. Blaming poverty on the poor is the same. The poor of Britain are being used as scapegoats for this countries monumental economic f¥ck ups. Occupation of Afghanistan 72 billion pounds a year.. NHS starved of cash. MP's expenses, banking crises, you name it. This treasury has mis managed the countries money for years and now we are reaping what they sowed. I'm fairly certain inviting economically bankrupt third world former Soviet sht holes into the EU so America can put nukes on Russia's door step seems like a good idea to people like Daviid Cameron. To everybody else it just seems retarded. People of Britain you are pawns in a game and you are being lied to and manipulated at every turn. So read your copy of the sun, watch Britains got talent and go back to f¥cking sleep. Your not given enough information to even have real thoughts. The big corporations want to see a end to benefits so that people are forced to commit crime in order to survive. Those people can then be incarcerated and forced to work for nothing with no rights and no pay. This is what government and big business want. A slave work force with no rights. So here's a idea, rather than being complicit in this Orwellian nightmare you wipe the sht from your eyes. Sorry if my comments have caused offence to anybody. Fact is chain gang is not a part of a old history of America. It's the dawning of a new one.
People unable to eat , buy food. & heat their homes but some dirt Eastern European scum bag gets it all !
Out with David & Ian 2 parts !
What's really going on here is that the funding rules for JCP have changed and they now receive one lump sum of money out of which everything is to be paid, and they do not want to issue these cards because the cost of them literally comes out of their pockets.
They have either stated that the scheme does not exist, or outright refuse to give me one, without any explanation or reason, other than "it's discretionary" which, it is not. Discretion must be conferred by some body or by some act and there is no discretion in this case. I have tried to explain this to the people in charge, but they just don't listen. They don't understand the procedure and refuse to identify what guidelines they are using, nor do they identify the source and scope of their purported "discretion" (because there IS none).
I don't understand what else to do, as they refuse to pay for travel expenses to interviews and keep asking me to travel to workshops every day at my expense, out of £72 per week.
What a diabolical predicament being unemployed is and being treated like vermin at the JC. One day these two-a-penny bureaucrats will be signing on themselves and find out what it's like.
Mr H