Forced to pay £150 for replacement certificates due to college negligence

gvw121

tomjonesrules wrote: »

You are not taking responsibility, you're blaming everyone but yourself!

If you apply for a job, would you expect an employer to use "plenty methods of communication" to invite you for an interview?

My recruitment consultant who got me my current job emailed me to come in for an interview then started calling me. So yes they should use plenty of communication.

Mate if I knew I was to blame I wouldn't be typing this right now. When you get a hospital appointment they now write
Letters and text you to remind you of your next appointment.

Hintza

gvw121 wrote: »

When you get a hospital appointment they now write
Letters and text you to remind you of your next appointment.

Not here they don't, I am off to the Beatson today for an appointment made in July last year.

(Fortunately I have a social secretary who keeps me right )

ThumbRemote

gvw121 wrote: »

Mate if I knew I was to blame I wouldn't be typing this right now. When you get a hospital appointment they now write Letters and text you to remind you of your next appointment.

I suspect the hospital uses multiple methods to get in touch, as it's in their interest for you to turn up for the appointment. Similarly a recruitment consultant makes money out of you getting a job.

The university almost certainly doesn't care if you collect the certificates or not, so why would they contact you in multiple ways?

Personally, I'd be querying why it costs £150 and not just a sensible admin charge. Surely £20 is more than enough to cover the costs of producing a replacement bit of cardboard.

gvw121

ThumbRemote wrote: »

I suspect the hospital uses multiple methods to get in touch, as it's in their interest for you to turn up for the appointment. Similarly a recruitment consultant makes money out of you getting a job.

The university almost certainly doesn't care if you collect the certificates or not, so why would they contact you in multiple ways?

Personally, I'd be querying why it costs £150 and not just a sensible admin charge. Surely £20 is more than enough to cover the costs of producing a replacement bit of cardboard.

From a security perspective though they should try and encourage students by contacting them through diffrent ways to collect the certificates. It's a risk on their part such documents for to long, as I mentioned before identity theft is rife at the moment. Yes I agree £150 is an excessive fee to replace 4 bits of paper, I had to wait 2 weeks as well and it wasn't sent by special post so the same it could have got lost in the post as well

pulliptears

3 days after I started a Foundation Degree at my local college my Dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I nursed him and continued my studies. He died over the Easter of the 2nd year. I collected my certificates.

Jakg

ThumbRemote wrote: »

Surely £20 is more than enough to cover the costs of producing a replacement bit of cardboard.

From memory the college will have to contact the exam board for another certificate - they set the price, not the college, and theres nothing they can really do about it.

I think it's unreasonable to expect someone to chase you up "plenty of ways" for anything... you put the effort in to get the qualification, the least you can do is pick up the proof.


EDIT - My high school didn't even send out any letters...

whitewing

It was your responsibility to collect the certificates, so I think you should pay the full amount.

However, I find it intriguing that the college's reply tells you that the ex-gratia offer of half the amount has now been withdrawn. I would have expected them to give you 10 days or so to consider their points before withdrawing the payment.

Personally, I would write back and say that you are prepared to agree to disagree, that you are ready to move on and that you wish to retain a favourable view of the college so after some consideration you would be happy to accept the £75 as full and final settlement so that you can all put it behind you as January draws to a close. Don't mention that they stated that they had withdrawn the offer.

They will then either send you a cheque and you can consider that you made your point and got a favourable outcome that you didn't deserve. (You deserve nothing in my opinion). Or they will take a principled stand and remind you that the offer was withdrawn. In which case you can continue your battle for as long as you wish.

Corpsebride86

I work in a college, and just to clarify it is NOT the college that sets the price for reissued certificates it is the exam board.

Where I work we send certificates out recorded delivery, and the number we get returned is shocking, mostly just because students will not go to the PO to collect them. when we got a returned certificate we call the students to query the failed delivery and agree with the student to resend them.

If we get them back we send a letter (not recorded delivery) to inform them that the certificates are avaliable for collection, after six months they go to archives and after four years are destroyed.

Had I not of recieved or had notification that my certificates were ready for collection I would of chased it up, Im afraid it looks like a very expensive lesson learned!

BargainMad_3

I think you will find that the "set up" that your college operates is no different to that operated in other colleges up and down the land. Certainly no different to ones I have encountered.

The onus is a simple one - it is on the student to go and collect their certificates.

Colleges are not going to email you, text you, phone you, twitter you or poke you on facebook. It was good of them to post a letter to students to alert them that certificates are available. Why should they even need to do that?

And they don't have to hold on to documents of this type. You have left the place. And they have no obligation to waste time or effort on people who didn't come to collect them. They can justifiably dispose of them as they have no need to have them in their premises. Plenty of students DON'T COLLECT them for various reasons.

And lets face it - we are talking YEARS since you left the place !

The whole ethos of the education system is (meant) to produce independently minded people who can work off their own initiative. Anyone who has sat exams knows that the certificates will be available for them in due course without having to be "alerted". They will find a window to go and collect them whatever else might be happening in their lives. There is no justification for your course of action in this matter.

Of course this answer is not the one you want to hear and hence it will be dismissed as "wrong" - but you might be able to reconcile yourself to the situation if you were to see it in hard reality.

spadoosh

Were are the certificates that you were supposed to collect?!

Ask for the original letter that was sent and see if there is a collect by date. if there isnt then they should be liable for disposing of said important document.