I am aware that in the areas that have been 'plussed' it can be a nuisance having to ring the contact centre for a claim form for a customer, but in this case the SCI was needed for training purposes. If you had explained that to the first person that you spoke to I'm sure that a form would have been sent to you without any fuss,if there were still any in the office, although it might have had ' for training purposes' written on it.
JCP offices no longer hold stocks of claim forms so you are not being given the runaround if you are told that one cannot be sent.
In this office, if a downloaded IS claim form is received it is sent to the contact centre for them to do their bit, i.e.arrange interview and notify customer etc.The date of claim is taken as the date that the form was downloaded unless it is received more than one calendar month after the download date, in which case the date of receipt is the date of claim.For IB claims it's the same, apart from the one month date.
It can cause problems for the customer if they are given a claim form by an advice organisation, because the date of claim would be the date that the completed form was received in the office, which could be some time later. Before we had the contact centres,when CAB for example) could hold stocks of forms we had an arrangement that the advice org. would fax the office to say that a form had been issued so that the date of claim could be established.I don't know how this would be regarded nowadays, given the advent of contact centres, but it might work in an emergency. We get very few downloaded claims because of the cost of printing them off, particularly in colour!
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