This morning the dreaded brown envelope arrived on the door mat inviting me to begin the process of converting from DLA to PIP. Long time users of the forum may remember the fun and games involved in converting my IB to ESA, so will guess that I'm less than ecstatic about this, but I knew this day would arrive eventually and so have prepared as thoroughly as I can. Step 1 is make the actual claim. DWP know, or should know, that I don't do phones and have known this for at least 10 years, so I'm less than happy to get a letter demanding that I phone them though obviously realising it's a standard letter and an organisation as big as DWP can't possibly be expected to avoid deliberately upsetting claimants by asking the impossible. On top of that, I'm told very firmly that I must claim as soon as possible and certainly within 4 weeks. Since the letter has taken a week to get here, that's already reduced to 3 weeks, so I bite the bullet and decide it's going to be dealt with straight away. Carer phones the number on the letter and after countless repetitions of 'find the answer to your query online' and 'you could call back later' finally gets to speak to an actual human being. Now, both carer and I appreciate that the people answering the phones don't necessarily have that much training in the specific benefit that they're dealing with, but the service we received to day was totally appalling, particularly since this is the dedicated PIP helpline. First, the phone person insisted 4 times that he had to speak to me and only gave up when carer asked what he thought 'can't make or receive telephone calls' actually means and was he suggesting we were making this up. Then he had to go and ask someone else what he had to do. After another long pause, he advised we have to write in to ask for a paper form, he can't ask for it on our behalf and we can't phone anyone to ask for it. Since we know from experience that getting a response from DWP to an actual letter is likely to take weeks if it happens at all, this was not an acceptable solution given the tight time limits already in place. After some arguing, we were passed to a manager. Again, after an enormous amount of arguing and another query as to what they think 'can't make or receive telephone calls' means, my carer faked me saying 'yes' so they would agree to post a form to us immediately. The explanation for their refusal to do this otherwise was on grounds of data protection, which is of course total b******s. How could they possibly breach data protection by sending a form to a claimant's address? Even if the claimant hadn't asked for it and didn't want it, all they would have to do is not fill it in! Also, this particular benefit was set up as a phone only benefit, so there's nothing in place for claims to be made any other way. Again, b******s because paper forms are available (though not downloadable because they have to have your name and NI number printed on them), and my previous research led me to believe a simple phone request for the form was sufficient, and even if it's true, it shouldn't be. There must be plenty of disabled people who cannot use a phone for some reason, so making a disability benefit only claimable by phone can only be designed to exclude a proportion of potential claimants. Not surprisingly, I am absolutely fuming. Can you imagine what would happen if your bank suddenly decided they would only offer telephone banking and if you couldn't do that, tough - you have to write in every time you want to do anything? So why should DWP be able to get away with this? On top of that, I didn't know until afterward that the first person my carer spoke to automatically assumed that if I can't do phones, I need an appointee - how insulting when for all he knew it was because I'm physically unable to speak? Does being unable to use a phone automatically mean you're incompetent to deal with your own affairs? I so want to take them on over this, perhaps starting with a few disability forums of which I'm a member, and my MP. I'd also like to try a formal complaint, though from experience it will get absolutely nowhere. Any other suggestions folks?