Perhaps "self employed" is the wrong term. What i mean is that the boss expected me to work for a month and then invoice her and she would produce a cheque for me. There was to be no contract and she said things like, well if i don't like the quality of your work i wouldn't expect to pay you for all the hours you bill! Which tbh i think is DODGY as hell. We never got into discussions about tax or NI contributions, but i suspect she had no intention of paying the tax and it would all be up to me. No the HMRC and NI contributions office don't know that i am/was self employed because i went to the job assuming i would be employed by the company so never got around to organising this. She's currently saying she won't pay me for the 2 days i worked for her although i do intend to invoice her because, in my opinion, she's exploiting people. But don't worry, i will tell the job centre this.

Thanks for the advice, guess i'll just go to the job centre and see what they say. But hopefully i do have some sort of backing. I've got emails that were sent between me and the employer which, tbh she comes across as barking in. Whilst i always tried to retain some professionalism. And yeh, i'm hoping the job centre will see i'm not trying to scrounge off the system, i've been unemployed since July and haven't attempted to claim before even though i've been actively seeking work all this time. I'm actually really embarrassed that i've reached the point where i've got to claim benefits. My mates think i'm stupid for not claiming when i legitimately could have done in this time, but i paid tax on my first gap year and it's a bugger. It sucks to be a graduate who can't even get a job in a coffee shop! I sent off 4 job applications yesterday and i'm hoping that i can start work as an adult education tutor soon (need to be enrolled on a course that doesn't start til the end of Feb) so i shouldn't have to claim for more than a month, at least this is what i'm hoping! But yeh, thanks for the reassurance!

Hey guys, Just after some advice really. I have been unemployed since graduating uni in July. I haven't claimed job seekers up until now because i thought i'd be able to find a suitable job and tbh i didn't want to scrounge off the system. However, i'm broke now so i reluctantly decided to apply and had my assessment interview organised for Wednesday. Now, as a stroke of luck it seemed, i was offered a Job trial for Wednesday. I went to this, and the job seemed ok but the manager/owner was fairly aggressive, but i thought i would be able to cope. Anyways at about 4pm i asked her if i was doing ok, on the basis that if i was to be offered the position i would cancel my job seekers interview. She said yes. So, i went into work yesterday and it was a nightmare. She made me cry 3 times over the course of the day and eventually i walked out. Now, usually i'm a stronger person than that but she was nit-picking over things and rather than telling me i'd done something wrong once, she'd labour the point and tell me a million times and then mention everything else i'd done wrong again. The role was advertised as an office administrator but actually seemed to involve a lot of editing/page setting which, in my opinion, are skilled jobs. Also, the *job* was on a self employed basis for 3 months rather than being employed by a company - i'm not sure if this is relevant. I was to be paid a month in arrears after producing an invoice. No contract. So i went home yesterday and decided i didn't want to go back. It's not worth it for £6 an hour. The problem is, that she is going to tell the job centre that i turned down the job and that i walked out unjustified, which i don't think is true. I walked out because the job on offer was nothing like what was advertised, the pay was rubbish for the job and the manager was awful. I have no intention of back claiming the job seekers, but do you think they will accept my new claim? Or have i completely shot myself in the foot here? Any advice greatly appreciated. I have a rearranged JSA appointment for Monday.

Double post

Ah ok, d'oh. I've sent them an email, hopefully they'll respond.

At the mo everything's been confirmed by phone. But it's definitely 5.9G not T. I'm trying to get them to email me confirmation, but you can't request emails over the phone. Their customer service is another issue all together....

ast week, my housemates and i used 5.9G (over an entire week) on our Virgin Media ADSL (non-cable) broadband connection. All of the downloads are legal, no p2p or other naughtiness. This put us in the top 5% of users last week, and now our speed is capped to 512kbit/s between 4pm and midnight for the next week. That's 64kBytes/s. PATHETIC and pretty much makes the internet unusable for our 5-person network. Since when does 5.9G equal "unlimited"? It clearly doesn't. 5.9G is not even excessive, by anyone's standards and especially for a 5 person house! I'm preparing for a fight about this. I'm fed up of ISPs setting the rules. They've met their match this time. Virgin claims that our downloads are unlimited, as even though our speed is reduced, technically we could still download as much as we want (it would just be at snails pace). This is just semantics. Yes, their cleverly worded policies mean that they are not breaking their terms and conditions. BUT saying that the top 5% of users get put on a capped list is unfair. If we were with BT (or someone else) with a greater market share, the value that puts us in the top 5% could be nearer 30G or perhaps, even 100G. There MUST be a way of arguing this. I know that there are plenty of ppl out there who are fed up with ISPs ruling the nest. Legally, they cover themselves cleverly. But i don't think anyone has attempted to challenge the Fair Usage Policy. And i intend to. Who's with me? If so, join this facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16034524092