NS ESA - Adding UC claim

KxMx

UC relies on multiple pieces of information coming in from different places. Then it has to be all joined up. It's actually not uncommon for the first statement to be incorrect.

They wouldn't have been able to take your word about being a pre 2026 claimant, their own system (which does not talk well to the ancient system used by ESA) needs to verify it.

Altior

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82124114#Comment_82124114

Sure, but in my (former) world, if something as basic as that was broken, it would require human intervention until it was resolved digitally. It wouldn't just knowingly and willingly be allowed to go wrong, screwing with real money, and wait for the customer to need to complain about it and have it resolved retrospectively.

I appreciate that there is a lot of complex stuff in UC overall, but I don't see how someone has coded it to allow deductions for ESA without a health element being included in the UC claim. It's coding logic, to be deducted for ESA you MUST already be considered LCWRA. That should then trigger the claim to be reviewed by a human, who would then verify my ESA status and identify that pre-2026 status applied and add it to UC.

I acknowledge this is a vent but I put so much effort into making things run as they ought to, failures outside of my control are exasperating.

Altior

My UC has finally been corrected after an inordinate struggle to engage with the Journal system.

Unbelievably it was resolved by an ESA agent. After my case manager threatened to resolve the issue by getting my ESA claim closed! I was left to call ESA so I could inform them that they might have UC trying to close my claim, and that is not happening, just a huge misunderstanding of how benefits interact from UC's end. Anyhow, I had to provide ESA with the entire backstory, and luckily for me the wonderful ESA agent immediately understood the issue and reached out to her direct contacts at UC. Not even her responsibility really, that only happened yesterday afternoon, and first thing this morning she called me to say that the UC contact had confirmed that it had now been resolved. Sure enough I got a corrected UC statement for the last AP a couple of hours later 😎

NedS

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82139870#Comment_82139870

Ah yes, I've worked in a few different departments with that one member of staff who has a little black contacts book and knows who to reach out to in any given department to get stuff resolved. Worth their weight in gold.

Glad you got it sorted.