Lois N on 26 February 2021
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Q. Are you having any deductions taken from UC, ESA, Income Support or JSA?
Yes
Q. Can you tell us about the impact it's had on your family?
Hi, yes I'm having an amount deducted from one amount that I already owed them when I had a crossover benefit. So it wasn't my choice to move to Universal Credit. I had no choice. And in the time that they moved me from the legacy benefit, I'd wracked up a bill that I had no idea about because they'd overpaid me and they took that whole amount out in one Universal Credit payment which was right at the beginning of the first lockdown where I'd lost my job and it took multiple phone calls and journal entries for me to finally get hold of someone and I was crying I had to you know, it really, really rinsed me for the month. I physically could not afford my bills. Subsequently, I had to have an advance for covid because I lost my job. So subsequently had to borrow I had to borrow money from my Universal Credit account in order to get me through because they were taking that money out. In the end, they put some of it back but I still have to pay some and the advance that I had to take is now payable at the end of April, it starts. And I still won't have paid off the other amount and no it was not done with my consent. None of this was and it took a really distressing number of phone calls to get through to someone to talk about how this could be sorted not to the detriment of my son and I. So absolutely not with my consent and absolutely left me in a terrible position.
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