Maternity allowance difficulties

[sweetsammi]

Hi there, hope your final weeks of pregnancy are goin well for you all!! Has anyone had any problems with the jobcentre when it comes to claiming maternity allowance? I've been in tears with it and ripping my hair out! I asked to be paid monthly starting from 15th of this month..that day comes and goes and i hear nothing from them! I call them, they tell me they never recieved my application! Then they call me back and say i'm not entitled and that i'll get incapacity benefit instead! Then they call and say I'm entitled to MA after all but they are waiting for extra info from my employer...Finally today i have recieved a confirmation letter saying payments will start on fri! BUT they are paying me weekly for some reason despite me asking for monthly! (I need monthly as all my rent and bills come out on the same day..so need to be sure its all in there lol) So i call them and they tell me they can change it to monthly but my 1st weekly payment will still be made on fri as it has already been processed...but after that i wont recieve another payment until end of nov because i changed it to monthly!! I never got an apology or anything... i expalined my situation and they said they cant do anything and that the monthly payments are made on a different date each month..if thats the case why ask me what date i want to be paid on on the form if i cant have it anyway??! oooH these people annoy me. I dunno how im gonna pay my rent and bills next week. I had to take maternity leave early as ive had lots of complications so i havnt a penny to put to my name.Hope u all have better success with yours if your claiming it. S orry to be all miserable ladies...im an emotional wreck today xx

 

[Arcanegirl]

The Jobcentre can be arses, theyve messed us around for various things aswell includidng making us live on a single persons benefit for 6 months because nobody could get hold of some info they needed.

Just keep on at them, hope you get it sorted soon

 

[Tezzy]

i hope you get it all sorted hun

 

[Soontobe]

Aw hun I'm glad it kinda worked out in the end for you, sucks that you won't get paid for awhile though
I think there are other ladies here having problems with benefits and stuff too..
Have a look down further at "Home life, Relationships and Finance" there might be some stuff there...

Best of luck

 

[mickey]

oh, sweetsammi, I am sorry for that!

hope you can manage the money trouble somehow, fingers crossed.

with my application all went well, besides of the date of first payment!

I have asked to get it paid from the date the baby is due (18th of november), and now I have received my confirmation they gonna pay me from the 9th of september???

might be the date I've handed in the application!

it really doesn't make sense they ask you from when you want it to be paid and if you want it weekly or monthly and they do not come by your preferences!

but those admin people! have worked in admin for two years myself and never in my life I saw so much going wrong than in this two years!!! bloody hell!!!

 

[happy_chick]

The jobcentre can be so useless at times & im sure they love to mess you about! I think you wont get a payment for that long as they pay you in arrears therefore u have to go a month with no payment kinda thing... hope you get it sorted

 

[princess2323]

i guess i got lucky i finish teaching in about 4 weeks and then i have winter vacation until jan. 10 ish but i'll just teach 3 online courses ---so i get to continue pay and work and all that in the comfort of my home-

 

[ablaze]

i guess i got lucky i finish teaching in about 4 weeks and then i have winter vacation until jan. 10 ish but i'll just teach 3 online courses ---so i get to continue pay and work and all that in the comfort of my home-

dont really think tht will reassure sammi


u got anything sorted sammi hun?

 

[sweetsammi]

dont really think tht will reassure sammi


u got anything sorted sammi hun?

Hi guys, well It turns out I was owed a lil bit more money than I was informed of! I rang them again and spoke to a lady who was a lil bit more helpful and sympathethic..she said because I'd asked for payments to start on 15th and they didnt sort it till 2 weeks later they owe me 2weeks worth...so luckilly i got paid 3 weeks of MA which should JUST cover my rent..still not happy with the service though. And still cant help but stress over how we gonna get by. But i guess thats part of the joys of parent hood!! xx

 

[princess2323]

Hi guys, well It turns out I was owed a lil bit more money than I was informed of! I rang them again and spoke to a lady who was a lil bit more helpful and sympathethic..she said because I'd asked for payments to start on 15th and they didnt sort it till 2 weeks later they owe me 2weeks worth...so luckilly i got paid 3 weeks of MA which should JUST cover my rent..still not happy with the service though. And still cant help but stress over how we gonna get by. But i guess thats part of the joys of parent hood!! xx

hey 3 weeks of pay is def. good ===congrats===hopefully it wont be as hard as u think it is ---u'll find a way-- i just know it...

 

[mickey]

other question on that one.

do they not send you back your originals you had to submit. I want and need them back!

have to ring there!

 

[lauren-kate]

I hope they do...

I'll also add that if you use the test date calendar thing on the website for Maternity Allowance, some of the dates are wrong. I sent mine off a couple of weeks ago using the dates they gave me, and just got it back informing me that I'd put the wrong dates on..

 

[sweetsammi]

lol oh yeah same thing happened to me also..useless!! x

 

[sweetsammi]

other question on that one.

do they not send you back your originals you had to submit. I want and need them back!

have to ring there!

They send back all of you're payslips. But they keep your maternity certificate and any other certificates u had to send. Well i didnt get mine back anyhow. I'm sure if u call them they'll let u have them back, if not i guess u could get another from your MW?

 

[littlelady]

i applied over 2 weeks ago, they sent my payslips back but still havent replied to let me know if im entitled to it

 

[sweetsammi]

i applied over 2 weeks ago, they sent my payslips back but still havent replied to let me know if im entitled to it

You'll probably really need to keep pestering them, its inconvientient but thats the only way i knew what was going on with my application, they never wrote to me like they're supposed to! Good luck with it hun. x

 

[mickey]

it took about unleast four weeks with mine to hear back from them.

I rang and they said I will get wage slips back, but not the maternity certificate.

 

[lauren-kate]

They seem to be taking a while now to reply with a decision and my payslips... When there was the problem with the test dates I wrote to them on the Thursday and I got a reply on the Monday dated from the Friday. They seem a lot more keen to follow it up when there's something wrong with it, and really not bothered at all when it's all correct...