3 way phone calls…

Hi all, last week I spoke to Universal Credit, twice, attempting to do a phone claim for someone who has already had a rocky path to this stage.

Only to be told by their staff… the first time that “a new procedure” (the start date of which she did not know) means they “cannot accept a three way phone call” to make a claim, and the second time to be told by the guy their staff “are not trained to do telephone claims” and that the only support available was “from the CAB” with an online claim.

Again, he could not/would not explain why they could do all of the above three weeks ago, as directly witnessed by the same client. Both members of staff flatly refused either to proceed or get a second opinion.

I naturally assumed (having done scores of telephone claims with people over the years) that this was mere bad luck on my part, but then today a colleague has had the same issue, being told on the phone that the new stricture banning 3 way phone calls is “on the (DWP) website” (I cannot see it there).

I am assuming this “new procedure” is simply not a thing and that I/we have just been very unfortunate, but I just wanted to check here in case I’ve missed anything?

We have also been having issues making 3-way calls to UC and other DWP departments across our team -  but this was not an issue until recently (about 3 weeks ago I think). It’s immensely frustrating

That’s interesting… so it is a growing issue then, and not just for us. I wonder what’s changed?

Also experienced this, was told that I could not help a client submit a tel claim, that I must go through CAB help to claim service. Which I duly did, and they effectively sat in on the call while I did the supporting.

I then tried it without them a couple of weeks ago and had no issues doing it without CAB being involved.

No idea where this came from.