I answered a series of queries raised by DWP about a client by my letter 4th February 2014. I received yesterday a letter dated 8th January 2015 acknowledging my letter and asking again for the information contained in the letter with the following comment
"I appreciate this is a busy time of year for your company but a reply is requested by 22/1/15"
Where do they get these people from ? My only guess is they are first "trained" by HMRC
There will be a rather terse phone call on Monday !!
Replies (14)
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Let me draft that for you
Dear M DWP bod
Please take my letter dated 4th February 2014 and your reply of 8th January 2015 to your supervisor and ask them to explain to you why I think you are an idiot.
Yours sincerely
Bernard
Have a look at the Daily Mail
Have a look at the DailyMail story regarding an ex investigator for the DWP Fraud Team. He spilled the beans about how corrupt the department is on setting people up to commit benefit fraud then getting rid of evidence, tregarding the fraud, and not admiiting to their colleagues of their misdemenour to earn the department a 50% penalty charge, themselves a good bonus and to improve the government statistics. Don't take any nonsense tomorrow, be firm and put them in their place. They are trained to bully.
What are you complaing about?
At least it acknowledged you were busy and it only requested - usually they just say 'you must respond by .... or else'! Baby steps - first they learn politeness, then they progress onto common sense. Not as quickly as a child admittedly but at least if they're going to be hopeless they'll be politely hopeless. I think that's a huge improvement.
Make sure you're equally polite when you ring to explain and I'm sure they'll be understanding and say 'as soon as possible would be lovely but we understand if it takes longer' (yes, seriously - if you're rude to them then you can only expect rudeness back)
a vwry quick response would suffice
"I refer to you letter dated 8/1/15 following my letter dated 4/2/14. Thank for for acknowledging that this is indeed my busy period and your request for a response by 22/1/15.
my response is why has it taken you nearly 1 year to make a response to my letter dated 4/2/14 and your expectation for a from me I my busy time with 3 weeks. Once i have received a satisfactory responsor to this issue I will be happy to espied in full to you.
I would enjoy this one !
I would enjoy this one, and would take them to task about why they have taken so long.
We hit back at enquiry letters before they even begin
On a similar vein, whenever we get an enquiry opening letter, which usually includes a date, usually a month, by which they want a response, I always reply in kind with a paragraph at the end of my letter giving them exactly the same timescale to respond or close the enquiry, and then I send them a closure request letter as soon as that date has passed. If there's a long trail of correspondence between us as the enquiry progresses, I always make sure that I respond within their timescales and highlight every single time they are late responding to my timescale. I've found it speeds them up no end when they're on the back foot and I've also found it a good thing to have in my armoury when it comes to negotiating penalties as they have to give allowance for co-operation if I've consistently responded within timescales and more quickly than they have!
Mouse007
I don't know where you have been for the past year or so but welcome back. Your graphics bring a smile everytime
love these answers, especially when the member comes up with a sarcastic comment after joining a few days earlier.