Non payment of ESA and the nightmare that has followed!

justjadej

Basically my partner and I receive ESA as he had his leg amputated at the beginning of this year, he is now mobile enough to get to his work focused appointments. On Friday 14th June, we received under half of our usual payment, we called and at first were told there was a sanction on the account due to non attendance of a work program appointment. Of which we do not know when as he hasnt missed any! After much back and forth phone calls it turns out that someone had put the sanction on by error and it will be lifted as it is their fault. We were promised a call bk to let us know the status...Now this was 10 days ago, we have called every day to check what's happening and every day we are told we will get a call bk, we have asked to speak to managers and then told they would call back and they never do! One person says they can't see the sanction and another says they are still waiting for it to be lifted. I just don't know what to do, we have bills to pay and won't get any money till Friday if we do at all as it seems this sanction which is their error hasn't gone away Called AGAIN today and a manager promised she would fix this by the end of today and issue payment...and nothing has been done.
What can I do?? Basildon office the people who release payment have no direct number, all I can do is call the call center and they request a call back, which either doesn't happen or they tell us lies over the phone! Someone please help as we are living on nothing and are getting into rent arrears etc
Thanks

bloolagoon

I can't help but wanted to say you have my sympathy, you should not have to suffer stress from their error, I hope it is resolved quickly.

justjadej

Thank you, I hope so too

Horseunderwater

For a start calm down.
These are your rights - If they state that they are or will call you back then that should happen within 3 hours and so if that has not happened then you need to escalate this. I suggest that you call them at 8am in the morning and tell them you'd like to make a serious complaint and will be contacting your MP if you do not get a call back as promised. While you are calling them you need to ask them to do what is called a faster executed payment (FEP) into your bank account for any money over due from 10 days or more ago. The money should be in the bank account by end of same day. It matters not whether there is a "sanction" in place or if there was an error causing all this. You need the money and that is the end of the matter. This should have been done automatically. And keep nice and polite while you are doing all this, as the last thing you need is for DWP to put the phone down and not call back again.

justjadej

Thank you for your reply . We have called every day at 8.30 onwards as you have suggested, we asked for a fast payment and were told that someone would look into doing so and call us back, on three occasions they did not call back as promised within the time frame. We then asked to speak to a manager, they informed us they would call back by 4.30 pm which also did not happen, instead a regular call center agent called back and told us a manger would call bk as that is apparently procedure, we told them we have had failed call bks but they cover this by having a regular person call bk and tell us a manager will cal instead of a manager as requested. One call center agent said they haven't lifted the sanction and one manager today that we finally got to talk to said she would have it fixed by 5pm and would do an instant payment and call us to confirm, which she did not. I have written to my MP so am hoping for some help. Every call center agent says something different and four have told us we would receive payment including one manager and nothing has happened. Funny thing is the work program manager, whom is the one that would put sanctions even called them to tell them to sort this out and they told her they would...even that didn't work. We have called and called and escalated and been given a one hour call back and no one has called. When they did call, they told more lies

socrates

I would tell them that Watchdog are your next call and your MP after that