I would have liked to see the dr go into more detail but at least it opens up a line of communication between the gp and atos. Send it off and follow it up with a phone call a few days later

Pretty much exactly what they did with us. we had to leave the appointment outstanding while waiting for it to be changed. Did they give you a number for the GP to call or is he just to call the call centre? Make sure he knows he needs to speak to the medical decision makers. My partner hardly spoke at his home appointment, i was allowed to do most of the talking.

Why would she not let you cancel? was it because it was a cancellation of a second appointment? I ask because they did that exact same thing to me. Call DWP and explain and they should tell ATOS to let you cancel it because it is unsuitable. DWP are in charge of the benefit but unfortunately ATOS are in charge of the medicals, however DWP overturned one of their decisions in my case so it might be worth calling them. Just explain that you are currently awaiting evidence that your husband is housebound which to be fair you shouldnt have to do, they should be contacting the GP rather than make you do the running around. I had to leave the appointment to stand while i did all the running about so that would be my advice, dont worry about the outstanding appointment at the moment because you still have plenty of time before it. Work on getting that letter to them which will arrive in plenty of time, make sure you keep a copy and I would personally include a letter of complaint about the way you are being treated. Please try not to panic. You will have the evidence you need in plenty of time. they surely cannot ignore a doctors letter. I know in our case our doctor called and spoke to them and within a few days we had a letter saying they agreed he could have a home appointment so not to come to the one we had for the centre but instead to await a home appointment which came through pretty quickly

I had a nightmare with ATOS too. Although my situation was different it was similar in that they had originally given my partner a home appointment then when the date didnt suit and i changed it they started giving me hassle and just like you we got a letter miraculously dated the day before i had called them saying we had to go to the assessment centre which was not possible for him. I called and complained and was told that the medical decision maker had decided he could go so i asked how they had come to that decision and it turned out they hadnt contacted our gp at all! I was given a phone number to pass on to the gp and they called and spoke to the medical decision maker on our behalf (they dont speak to claimants or their partners/carers, just other medical professionals). i did have to follow it up with a further phone call or two but it did get sorted after that, would your gp be willing to call them? Definitely make a complaint though. I actually havent gotten round to making a formal complaint yet there has just been so much going on but I just feel that I owe it to the people who have no one to help them through this process to complain about the way my partner was treated by atos, he would have been completely unable to handle the situation himself. I complained to DWP and they admitted to me there have been many similar complaints but I really do need to get a letter off to atos.

Cut a long story short, I have a dispute with Tax Credits that has been ongoing since october. After many missed deadlines on their end and so many calls to them I have lost count they have basically decided I am right and I have to get the money owed to me. However there is some sort of technical problem which prevents them from issuing the payment to me, something about someone hitting the wrong button on a computer which caused the claim to be closed and so a payment cant be made on a closed account. Apparently the only people who can fix this are in the IT department and they have a massive backlog. It has been weeks and weeks since I was told this and the situation has not changed. At no point since this started in October have I had any letters or calls from tax credits, although they claim to have called me several times, yet I have never had a missed call on my mobile from any numbers I didnt recognise as being in my contacts. Tax credits complaints department said I could complain to yet another level of management (there seem to be lots of these) within their department but it wouldnt do any good so they refused to give me any contact details for this person. So my question is: Who are tax credits responsible to? everything has an ombudsman or something these days but I cannot seem to figure out who this would be for HMRC. They owe me around 400-500 pounds (they wont tell me a figure either, although admit a payment is due) but seem unwilling or unable to give it to me. They also told me if i was in hardship i could be issued a giro cheque, I am not currently in hardship since I am now working fulll time, but I sure as heck was back in october when there was absolutely no money coming into our household and I racked up over 2k in credit card debt just to keep going, no one offered me anything back then other than more deadlines that they would then miss and extend without reason.

I have to say that honestly most people I have spoken to have been reasonably helpful its just that the odd one who isn't helpful can really manage to mess things up for you! Hold times are awful at this time of year because its renewal time but the twice I had to call them last week I got through reasonably quickly. I hate having to call them, but honestly recently it hasn't been too bad

Its really confusing, they messed me about royally and ended up ending my claim leaving me with no payments for three or four months while I went through the whole claim process again because it took them three attempts to send out a new claim pack after they finally admitted their mistake and told me I would need to reclaim and should have been told that originally. They ended up owing me somewhere in the region of 700 quid then only gave me a little under 200 because they only backdate for one month despite me being told to put a cover letter in and it would be no problem to get the backdate as its their fault. they never actually told me of their decision so I assumed it was still being looked at until the start of the year when I was told that the decision had been made and I would need to appeal, of course I couldnt appeal because more than 31 days had passed since the decision that I wasn't told about! Long story short - a few more attempts at sending out another form (how hard is it to post something really?) and the deadline for their decision on my appeal is tuesday. I would absolutely call them, most of the people there are actually really good at sorting out stuff over the phone although there is the odd one thats not like the guy I spoke to the other day. Income based JSA or ESA dont count, only contribution based I have just learned this because my partner just started claiming contribution based ESA so we are reclaiming now again even though our first one still isnt sorted yet! It can take ages to get through to them though, in my experience call either first thing in the morning or after lunch time and it tends not to be too bad.

make a fresh claim. But I am not sure if you need to still fill in something in the renewal pack too because that finalises last years award as well as sorting out the next years. I would call them and ask. Any break in employment you need to put in a new claim. i found this out the hard way when there was one day (yes literally one day) between my partner stopping work and me starting work, tax credits people told me to just change circumstances over the phone which i did. Turns out I should have been told to put in a new claim because of the break in employment, three months before i got another payment and still fighting for the backdate they owe me (since oct)

I have been mega busy these last few days, ended up having to go into work to cover someone else off sick so i havent had two minutes to work on my letter but i just wanted to pop in and say that partner got awarded PIP. I cant believe how quickly they made their decision, he got a text on thursday morning telling him and the official letter arrived yesterday. They are backdating to the date of his original claim too which is amazing news because its one less thing to fight them over. I need to prepare for a job interview that i have tomorrow so i dont know what time i will have today, but i definitely still want to complain because the way we were treated was so unfair, even if we did get the right result in the end. I just keep thinking about people who may not have the support my partner does and what they would do in a similar situation, i need to complain in the hope that this wont happen to anyone else.

Thank you for that, I am going to look out all the letters so I have the dates etc then start working on the letter after tea. I would appreciate your input once I have a draft, thank you very much for that.

we were originally assessed as needing a home appointment, but the appointment they gave didn't give me enough notice to get the time off. it was only after attempting to rearrange that we were sent the appointment for the city centre. The appointment was today and I have to say it went much better than expected. We were given a timeslot of 1130-1330 so I deliberately sat up late last night with partner so we would sleep late this morning so we were up less time to worry. We got up at ten, had our showers breakfast etc and the woman arrived about 12 which was great because we weren't sitting waiting and worrying for hours. Partner was obviously distressed, sat in the corner shaking most of the time but the woman was actually quite nice. Happy for me to explain things on partners behalf and even apologised for all the hassle we have had. She went into great detail about his various physical/mental health problems (he also has IBS and Asthma along with longstanding back pain) and I feel the assessment itself went well. We have to wait five weeks now to find out if we will get pip or not. I am not back at work till Wednesday nightshift so I plan to get a complaint in to anyone worth complaining to because I am still really upset about what we have been through just to get this appointment and the length of time it has taken - our original appointment which we had to cancel was for the middle of December! Is there anyone in particular I should be complaining to? other than DWP and ATOS themselves of course.

I absolutely will make a complaint to anyone who will listen because this is a ridiculous way to treat anyone, let alone someone whose mental health is so fragile. I just keep thinking what on earth would happen if i wasnt here to deal with all this because he absolutely couldnt deal with it himself

Good news, we got a home appointment! I still had to do quite a bit of back and forth with phone calls because ATOS said the GP hadn't contacted them but we got the right result in the end. Now I just have to hope he can get through it. Thankfully its only next week so not too long to wait because just waiting on the appointment is causing great stress

Our GP called today and after asking my partners permission to speak to me we had a long chat about ATOS and the assessment process. He stated that no one from DWP or ATOS has ever contacted him or anyone else at the surgery as there would be a note on his file and there isn't one. I explained my concerns with going into town for the appointment and he agreed with me that it would be a terrible idea he said that even someone coming to the house wasn't ideal as it could create stress and cause my partner to get back into self harming constantly which he was doing before but that with my support at the appointment he felt a home visit if absolutely necessary would be the only way he could attend an appointment like this. He is going to contact ATOS today or tomorrow telling them that if an appointment is absolutely necessary the only way he feels this can go ahead is if someone comes to the house on a day where I can be there too. GP is also willing to help get a new CPN so so far its good news. I will need to call ATOS on Monday and see if they have come to a new decision since the appointment is for Thursday as it stands. Poor partner is in some state having to deal with this all even though I have done all the phone calls, just thinking about it is sending his anxiety through the roof.

Yeah one of those threads is mine from 2013

I suspect they were one of three companies chasing an old quick quid loan that had been sold on to umpteen companies at the same time and was ultimately written off because of it. It was so long ago I'm not 100% sure though

It stopped for maybe a week or so but started again in the last few days. I confronted Scott and Co who said they never pass out details but I don't see how else they could have got my number. No letter ever arrived from mmf so either they never sent one or they don't have an up to date address which would kinda let Scott and Co off the hook I guess. I'm off tomorrow so want to get a letter off to mmf but on the other hand I dont really want them having my up to date address because I cant be bothered playing letter tennis with them

I really hope you get this sorted. I had a nightmare time with council tax a few years back which I am still currently paying but I am not a homeowner so didn't have as much to lose as you do. Why did you not get your single persons discount? Can you prove in some way that you should have been getting it? If so they can back date it, same thing happened to me with the student discount (which essentially is the single persons discount if you live with a non student as I did when I was a student) and I eventually got somewhere around five hundred pounds off the bill because they backdated the discount.

The report from the CPN makes no sense she specifically said that she had never given them a recommendation and would not do so as she wasn't allowed. In fairness I don't really trust her because of other recent issues and am trying to get my partner moved to someone else but I doubt she would tell an outright lie. I plan on contacting the CPN again tomorrow after I speak to the GP to see if I can figure out what has happened and if/how we can get the recommendation changed/deleted/whatever they need to do to get to the truth of the situation. No I never considered contacting Mind, I will do that first thing, thank you very much for the suggestion. I was worried enough about how he would cope with someone coming to the house as I doubt he will be ok with that either but at least he is in a safe place in that case. I simply cannot take him to the appointment in town. Its not even somewhere you can drive to, there is no parking for miles so we would have to take a train or drive to the nearest parking and walk through the crowds, made even worse by the fact that the appointment is for first thing in the morning when it will be mega busy. I just cant put him through that.

Sorry guys this is a long story, I will try to keep it as short as possible. My partner has been suffering from depression for a while which eventually led to him beginning to self harm due to his work environment making his life unbearable. He was signed off on the sick and very quickly unfairly dismissed from his job (totally different issue being dealt with separately) this made his mental health even worse and our lawyer advised he apply for PIP. We applied towards the end of last year and got an ATOS appointment through in January. It stated he had been assessed as requiring a home visit and they were coming to the house on a set date. Problem was that date was only three days from when we received the letter with my work I cannot change shifts that short notice so I called them to rearrange. They told me the next available appointment was weeks away but they could give me a date and I asked them if they could leave it with me as I didn't have my rota that far in advance and I need to be with him. They told me on the phone that I could simply change the appointment again if needs be. I ended up not being able to get that date either because there were too many people on annual leave that week (I am a nurse we cant get time off easily, it usually has to be organised quite far in advance) so I called to reschedule and was told this wasn't possible. I was told that if you cancelled twice it went down as a missed appointment. I argued my case and ended up phoning a complaint in to DWP who said ATOS were being unnecessarily harsh and told them to reissue the appointment. ATOS also said I hadn't called to cancel it on the day I did, they said I called the morning of which I clearly didn't since I work 0730 till 2000 and was in that day. We waited ages weeks and weeks for a new appointment and nothing came, Called atos who said no we had missed the appointment and weren't getting another. Called DWP again who fixed it and the next day we had a letter (miraculously dated the day before my call to DWP) but it said we had to go to the assessment centre which is right in the middle of the city centre. My partner doesn't cope in social situations, and does not cope well when around people he doesn't know he also has a learning disability that makes the prospect of going to an appointment like this even more scary for him which DWP and ATOS are aware of. I figured this was a mistake and called ATOS who said that his mental health nurse had told them he can go to the assessment centre. The mental health nurse claims she has made no such statement as she is not allowed to give a recommendation on someone she hasn't known for at least a year. The girl on the phone said she would put it through to the medical people to ask for it to be changed to a home appointment. Literally the next day we get a letter stating he would need to attend the assessment centre, and the day after we get an appointment through for one of the other assessment centres which is in the busiest possible part of the city centre. So I called today and got the same girl (what are the chances of that?) she was so lovely on the phone stated she didn't understand how they had come to a decision that quickly and then proceeded to read out to me the report from the mental health nurse (the one who stated she hadn't been allowed to give one) she stated she had known my partner for two months (an outright lie, he has been seeing her since October and was known to the service before that) and that he has no intention to return to work (again not true he would love to return to work, just not the job he had due to what they done to him, when he is better) and that he was fit to attend an appointment. I asked if our GP had been contacted and the girl said no, I asked why and she had no idea only telling me that the medical decision maker doesn't have to contact the GP its up to them. I then asked why they had based a decision on a statement which I disputed and was clearly an outright lie and was told it was the medical person that made the decision. I then asked to be put through to them but they don't speak to people apparently. I also informed her that my partner had cut himself the day the letter arrived and twice since because of the fear of this appointment, previous to this he had gone a fortnight or so without harming and that I would rather not go to the appointment and not get awarded pip than put him through anymore of this stress. He already had serious thoughts of ending his life on two previous occasions and I wasn't letting it get to that again. She suggested getting our gp to contact them because he can be put through to the medical decision maker people that I cant speak to and if he explains the situation they might change their minds. I have called the GP and asked for the doctor to call me back but he isn't in till tomorrow so I will need to wait. Our GP is brilliant and I know he will do what he can to help but what can I do if they wont change their minds? He was approved for a home appointment before the cpn put in that funny report that she promised me she hadn't done when I asked her about it stating that she wouldn't be allowed to because she hadn't known him a year. I also plan on asking the gp to confirm that he has been seeing the cpn for way more than two months, proving she is not telling the truth. nothing about his medical condition has changed or improved since he was originally approved for a home appointment so how can they state he needs to go to them. He cannot go to the city centre, hasn't been in the town for almost a year now because of fear of people. the only place he goes by himself is the doctors surgery which is on our street. he will come out with me to the shops but only if we go at night when its quiet (we have a 24hr asda close by which we go to in the early hours of the morning sometimes) but other than that he pretty much wont leave the house. The doctor has had to put him back on diazepam since this letter arrived and I am honest to god worried that I am going to come home from a shift to find him lying in a pool of his own blood. How can I fix this? Can I fix this? How are ATOS being allowed to get away with the way they treat people? and who can I complain to?

I never really got anywhere with it to be honest. I should have persued it harder really but I just have so much going on at the moment that it became a really low priority.

And now the constant calls have started! I just refused to go through data protection with them and she said she would send a letter so I said 'go ahead' and hung up. At least if they send a letter I will get a clue as to what this is about I guess. Off to type up a letter to Scott and Co telling them that they have no permission to share my details. I will wait for MMF's letter to arrive before I deal with them I think that way I know what its about before I go steaming in with letters. If I find out for sure that its been scott and co that gave them my number I am going to be so angry its unreal!

I don't have my mobile number linked to any social network, I'm only on facebook and my profile is completely private. The timing is a bit convenient though, if they were going to find me through my credit file surely they would have done it by now? There are no suspicious searches on my file either and that wouldn't give them my mobile number, would it? Like I say I wont worry too much about it if it doesn't keep up. At the moment I suspect that they have gotten my number from scott and co, but aren't sure if its me because it could just be someone with the same name as there is nothing to link me to my old address unless they have searched my file which it doesn't look like they have as yet, so I think they are just fishing at the moment. if it keeps up I will write to them telling them to stop harassing me.

I haven't heard from MMF in years. To be fair I have moved house and changed my phone number so that's probably why I haven't heard from them recently but even before I moved it was a long time since I heard from them. If I remember correctly MMF were one of three companies chasing me for an old quick quid loan, if that's the case its likely that its just approaching the six year mark and they think I am too stupid to notice that its stat barred after five in Scotland. Although it doesn't appear anywhere on my credit file but I cant remember if it ever did appear or not. I don't want to contact them and rock the boat but if the messages keep coming I will write to MMF and tell them to stop harassing me and that I don't owe them anything. I am also going to contact Scott and Co and tell them that they do not have permission to share my details, it might not help but its worth a try. As long as I don't start getting lots of calls/texts I will leave it at that but if it gets worse then I will need to do something because I cant go back to the stress caused by constant calls and texts like last time.

They are texting my current number now. The whole thing is just so strange. I have never had any dealings with Scott and Co before so I don't know how they would have even had an old number for me, they didn't get it from the council because I have had my current number the whole time I have lived in this council area. MMF certainly have no way of having my current number, I have had no dealings with them for several years. I am not worried about MMF chasing a debt because I know it no longer exists, if it ever did, I am slightly worried that I am going to start getting constant calls and texts about old debts I am just thankful they don't have my work number this time round.