My husband is self employed and has been for 17 years but has been off with a back problem for nearly 12 months. We have tried to claim ESA but were originally told we had not paid enough NI. We paid the NI up to date and claimed again. He attended a medical and was told he was entitled to benefit (this was end of November). Since then we have been told he has not paid enough NI from 07? We again paid up to date and then were told there would be a 6 week penalty and would not get any benefit until the 6 weeks were up and we would not get anything backdated (we are appealing this at the moment). The 6 weeks is now up and we have been told they haven't received a sick note - we provided one, then told we should have our first payment the following week (this week), then told they would ring back to get details of where to pay the money into, we had to ring them again to be told he wasn't actually entitled to anything because he failed his medical!!!! Still waiting for them to phone us back! Has anyone any clues how to deal with these people - there seems to be one excuse after another!! Please help!!

hi Joe95, whilst we wern't in the same situation, we had an awful long wait to get our money sorted, the way we eventually got it was that my partner went on the phone and ended up having a panic attack whilst speaking to the call centre woman (not put on i hasten to add!) but it did the trick and the money came the next day! In our experience it totally depends on who you speak to, and just luck of the draw unfortunately, but all i can say is bombard them with calls until you get a helpful one!!

If your husband has failed his medical he isn't entitled and you should have had a letter informing you of this, giving you the option to appeal and continue to get paid while the appeal was being looked at. You only have a month in which to do this so you had better ring them and double check. As for paying the NI conts, HMRC always put a six week suspension on all late NI payers it's nothing to do with the ESA staff. They only have the info screen to look at and can only update your claim when the info is updated by HMRC. Ring again with a clear list of questions and tell the operator you want a call back from the claims staff, hopefully they will be able to explain things a bit better for you. Good luck

Any more?