indeed, but it's relevant as your post-wp fla's will most likely 'require' you to use the service one way or another. now i'm not saying you should play the system (that would be feeding their belief of what they think we're doing anyway since not being able to find work for over two years), but what you put down in your 'activity history' on UJM is basically the same crap you filled out on that flimsy little booklet before UJM was introduced. you can put down just about anything and it counts as an 'activity' -- such as reading the papers, or being refused a job. i remind you again, that you CAN post-date this, so you don't actually have to sign in to that useless search engine every day. if your advisor tells you that you do, then that is their mistake and you're dealing with a douchebag and should request to be transferred to someone else.

that is something worth noting, if you actually tell your fla that you're online every day you can set yourself up for unreasonable activities like this. no one can be expected to have internet access ALL the time -- they may try to argue "but oh, you have a library near you, don't you?" or other such nonsense, but where i live you only get a free half hour per day of library internet time before you have to pay for it. furthermore the vast majority of UJM vacancies are agency based and lacking an 'apply' button which will actually show up on your application history. in this case you need to make your own note about the application, and include the job ref# to support your entry. the UJM cannot be prescribed as a source for generating leads, only for activity record keeping purposes if you didn't opt out of it (which is the smarter option, but expect to be hassled about it every time you come in).

just thought i'd add -- if your agreement entails "UJM -- X number of steps per week" -- this means you simply need that many entries in your activity history + application history combined. so technically you just need to update your activity history once a week with X number of entries -- you can enter your own dates. even though they may all be registered on the same day, they will still be time stamped appropriately. they cannot force you to log into the service every day or use it to apply for jobs.

that puts my mind at ease a bit, thanks. still a bit worried though, the birkenhead jobcentre which i am to attend now, as my local one doesn't participate in this post-WP thing (AGAIN out of my way, but not as bad) is a notorious sanctioning machine. just last year they had someone slit their wrists on the second floor as a result of their badgering, right in front of everyone. i'll try to keep my wits about me -- don't show up like a slob and be charming and they tend not to try and trick you. makes sense i guess.

I'm about to have my "Post Work Programme Assessment" interview on the 16th and I'm extremely worried about getting sanctioned. See, the thing is (my WP provider was Ingeus), they sort of "forgot" about me for well over a year. I attended the induction and around 4-5 sessions, at which point the adviser assigned to me left. Now, I don't know if my file simply wasn't passed on to someone else or what it was, but ever since around 17 months ago I simply stopped receiving appointment letters! Now obviously, I didn't mind -- the programme was patronising and ultimately boiled down to nothing more than what I was already doing to try and find work, except it was very much out of my way (over 10 miles away), and transport costs were prohibitive -- each time I went to see them I was £7 out of pocket after what they were required to refund me, as I had to transfer twice using non-transferable tickets. I was living on £10-£15 a week, so that's just not sustainable. But I digress. So I wasn't about to chase THEM down for the privilege of attending their vacuous workshops. Now I find out that this "exit report" has been filed with the jobcentre, and I'm apprehensive -- I haven't attended a work programme workshop in 17 months as I was never sent any more appointments -- I hadn't been contacted at all except for the letter telling me that I'm now done with them, and didn't receive any non-attendance sanctions. Is this going to be reflected in the "report" that my DWP advisor is going to interview me about? Am I now looking at a 3 year sanction for failure to participate in the work programme??

i was pretty upset. IdaInFife -- you have my sincere apologies for being so rude. this damn sky thing has got me all befuzzled. i meant no offense. well... i did, but i didn't mean it. =D i do rely on this site for a lot of questions so i hope i didn't ruin things by getting snappy. @watchinginvestigation2010: the person paying will not transfer the money into my own account for personal reasons -- she's only willing to pay the company directly.

the person making the payment is an 86 year old woman that doesn't speak any english. debit card payments are out of the question. it HAS to be a bank transfer or the bill isn't getting paid. @topcat: the business account can't be used for private customers. i asked sky about this and it is a different account. they're simply refusing to give me their account info. i had a direct debit set up with them when i was a customer, so i have now had to resort to my bank to see where the money was going. it's rediculous that i would have to take such measures just to be allowed to pay a bill.

the 'business' account is not the same as the private account. thanks for trying to help though.

sorry if i came across wrongly. i just dont see the point of a forum if f all problems are resolved via kiss-assery and any mention of white white knights. i ask the questions i do because i NEED to -- not because i HAVE to.

amazing. you've logged over 7500 posts here and that's the best answer you can come up with? good job.

really? there is something about this that just seems extremely shifty to me. is this just british regulation? the rest of europe seems to have caught on to the fact that electronic bank transfers are the norm by now. why should sky be entitled to my bank details and at the same time be allowed to withold their own? for some reasonn EVERY other bill i have accepts this form of payment (including Virginmedia, who i've now switched to), yet Sky feels the need to add some sort of exception. why am i obligated to provide all of MY details when they can openly refuse to provide theirs? also -- seeing as they are threatening me with legal action -- should it even matter how they receive their money?

As the title says. I have an outstanding bill which someone has kindly offered to pay on my behalf. the money would be coming from a foreign account, and the ONLY way that it will be paid is via bank transfer directly to sky. the other party involved is not willing to first transfer the money into my UK account, or use any other payment method. however this is besides the point -- Sky are simply REFUSING to provide me with bank details, claiming they "only accept direct debit/credit card payments/bank giros." is this even legal? can a company demand payment and then refuse to provide you with their bank details? if you're a business customer, sky has no problem providing you with their bank details -- what's with the fuss for residential customers? i spent the better part of 2 hours speaking to their outsourced minimum-wage slaves and supervisors about this, and always received the same scripted answer. one of them even had the gall to tell me i should have the money transferred into "a friend's account, provided it was a UK account, because as long as the sort code and account number are correct the account holder's name shouldn't be a problem" and then have him pay it out to me, to pass on to sky. meaning basically the 'advisor' told me to try to trick my foreign family member into thinking they were paying sky when in fact the money would be going into someone else's account to pass on to me. on top of this, sky has been threatening me with legal action for about a month now, and i am getting nowhere with them -- if they want their money so badly, then why can't i simply transfer the funds directly? it's rediculous. i've never encountered this problem with any other company.

well, so a lot of things have become clearer since the last time i posted. to briefly recap -- i was sent a bill in november for £1331 worth of gas usage. i've been a tenant in this rather small newbuild bungalow since august 11th, when i took over the tenancy from my deceased father. he was severely disabled so i took care of all his bills, and knew everything that was coming into or going out of the household. he had been a tenant here since november 2006 (when the property was built). after speaking to xoserve we were under the impression that the meter was unregistered and since there has never been a gas bill since the property was built, we thought "fair enough" and left it at that, thinking we were enjoying free gas from a botched supply that somehow slipped through the cracks. well turns out the meter was installed by an independent supplier, so xoserve simply didn't have a record of it, and scottishpower did indeed have a claim to it. in any case, on to my point: here's the way the bill (which was sent to "the occupier") was broken up (mind you, and this is important -- scottishpower has NEVER sent anyone around to read the meter, and NEVER sent a bill before): Balance of previous bill: £0.00 for the period of 22/11/08 to 30/11/08 (that's a week): reading: [email protected] (109 units) = £46.56 for the period of 01/12/08 to 11/12/09 (346 days): reading: [email protected] (2659 units) = £1135.86 then comes the standing charge, vat, etc etc. anybody else see something wrong with this picture? where's the period from 11/2006 to 11/2008? apparently according to them, no one was using any gas in the house for two years, and the ENTIRE amount (i checked the meter and indeed it was at ~30000) was run up in the last year. LOL. it is now just over 2 months later and i just had a look at the meter again -- it now reads 30943. that's an increase of around a thousand in two months (which is quite low considering recent temperatures, is what i'm saying). scottishpower is CLEARLY falsifying data on the bill in order try to make me pay for over 3 years worth of gas consumption during which they never bothered to read the meter. i've told their bailiffs who've been knocking that if they're prepared to divide that bill by 6 (the 5 months i've lived here out of over 3 years), then perhaps i'd be willing to work something out with them. they've now threatened to force their way in to install a prepayment meter and to remove goods. i told them to go f*** themselves and that i'd be the one seeking legal action for their obvious attempt to defraud me. i really don't want this to go to court, but i was told the ombudsman wouldn't be much help and scottishpower refuses to budge. any ideas?

no, didn't submit any readings -- i was under the impression that the meter was unregistered, like i was told by transco/xoserve at the time and was recently told again shortly after taking up the tenancy. someone did come to read the meter back in november, but it's the first gas bill that's been sent to the address since the property was built in '06. the period on the bill is dated back to 22/11/08, with a previous balance of 0.00. which strikes me as odd since the property had already been lived in for 2 years at that point...

So in August of this year I took over the tenancy of my current property from my father, who lived there since Nov. 2006 and passed away. The property is a small bungalow, built in 2006, by Riverside housing association. He was disabled and I cared for him, so I'm fully aware of any and all bills pertaining to the property since he moved in, which is why i was allowed to succeed the tenancy. I did not actually live there with him. Now, to my problem -- Scottishpower have recently sent me a bill for £1331.82 -- they say that this covers the period from 1/12/08 to 11/11/09. There are several problems with this: Scottishpower has never received ANY payments for the gas supply to this property. The gas meter was last read by Scottishpower in 2006 shortly after my father moved in, after which they promptly sent him a bill for £46.56. He wanted to dispute this as he had just moved in, so we called Transco who told us that the meter was unregistered. My father explained this to Scottishpower after being harassed for several months, after which they dropped the whole thing, and were never heard of again. Until now. Turns out the meter was installed by an IGT, and after i did a bit of research, it turns out that Scottishpower actually WERE due some money after all. On the bill they sent me, they dated the 22/11/06 reading as 22/11/08, meaning that the 46 pound bill they sent my father back in 2006, they've now dated 2008. I know for certain that there hasn't been anyone around to read the meter or a bill sent to this adress since 2006. I do know that he tried to switch providers to Britishgas who also provide the electricity here back in 2007, however they said they could not take over the supply as they could not establish who the current provider was. So the entire time, we were under the impression that the meter was unregistered, and, as the Transco rep at the time told us, was "simply leeching off the national grid" and that he technically didn't owe anyone a penny. So basically no gas usage was ever paid for at this address. Now, other than the false date of the last meter reading, they are trying to say that the gas consumed at this property in the last 346 days was 29836kWh. This is completely impossible. It's a tiny bungalow, the heating was on for no more than 4 hours a day, no more than 6 months a year. There is a new boiler and a new gas fire in the living room, both of which are economy models to minimize consumption. It's a new-build bungalow with excellent insulation. The stove is electric. They are trying to say that this property used in excess of 3592 watts per hour of gas, every hour of every day for 346 days straight. I believe they are doing this to get around the fact that bills can only be backdated for the last year's worth of consumption. This is all beside the fact that I only moved in here on the 11th of August. One more thing worth mentioning -- they did not have my father's name, nor do they have mine. All bills by scottishpower have been addressed to "The Occupier" or "Riverside Properties". Now they have passed the case on to Bailiffs who are already harassing me for the full amount. What are my options?