Hate Citizen Advice Bureau

With regard to confidentiality and discussing someone's case without them present, they are right that in that situation they could do nothing. Your mother however can over-ride this by authorising your name to speak on her behalf. But only she can do this, not the staff or volunteers at CAB. It is comforting that they do take it seriously, otherwise I'm sure not many people would have faith in their service if another person could discuss their account
without authorisation.

She's my mother. Why would I lie?

She was very unwell to come.

Hi,

I went to my Citizen Advice Bureau and wasted 3 hours of my life.

I left home at about 8 and got there about 8:30 only to find that there was a long queue waiting ahead of me. So I decided to be patient and wait.

Once I was inside, I was told to fill in a form. However, since I was representing my mother and she was already on their system I did not have to fill out the whole form. I just had to fill in her first name and surname and tick that she was already registered.

To my suprise, they told me that I had to fill out the whole form, so in my defense I told her that I did not have to. It clearly says on the form, please fill in your first name if you are already registered with us. I asked the woman if she could read English, because she looked about 20 was clearly a college student. She spoke very fluent English when she gave the form to me. She was so rude and told me to fill in the form or to leave, so I decided to fill in the form.

After filling out the form, I was invited inside to speak to an adviser about my representatives problem. I told them that the representative was unable to come due to their poor health, but I was only to find that this scumbag adviser simply telling me that the representative had to be there. I was in such a bad mood that I actually argued with her. She quickly gave up knowing that I knew very good English and was clearly educated unlike the majority of the people in the building.

Thing is, this place is about 30 minutes from my area and to be honest, the area is diverse. It has a lot of immigrants from Asia, Europe and Africa, and I don't want to sound rude or cause offence, but they can't speak English properly yet alone have manners or respect. This was probably a reason why this bureau were so rude and poorly managed.

Thats not the end. I had to go back to the bureau with my representative only to find that we are not allowed back in. The woman said that I was under 18, and that I had to be over 18 to come in. Like WTF, this European let me in 2 hours ago without a fuss, and now she says I'm underage. I'm obviously in my 20's, I have a lot of facial hair etc. I even showed her my ID.

Today has been a reality check of life. I have learnt today that the Citizen Advice Bureau are useless and so rude and that maybe I may have to move elsewhere.

I have just recently started working at the citizens advice and confidentiality is one of the things that we are big on. There are many many cases and conflict can arise. As regards to your situation, as others have said...your mother needs to give a written form of authorization otherwise we could be in trouble for breaching her confidentiality with you even though you are her daughter.

We have no way of knowing that you are who you claim you are.

My personal experience of CAB was also pretty negative. I needed a bit of help filling in a divorce application (hope I don't get kicked out of here for being old enough to do that). Spouse had been vaguely threatening to go after my money, so I just wanted to be sure I wasn't scoring any own goals on my application form. The adviser declared that the spouse would definitely push the money claim (he couldn't have known that of course), and that I needed a solicitor. He warned me against bad lawyers who would charge huge fees, and directed me to a lawyer of his choice. Well, I got a couple of my several questions answered by the lawyer's assistant for free, but he also quickly got rid of me, and all the firm would offer me was to take over the whole case for £600. "That's a lot," I said, "How much for just one more brief session to go over that form, and then I'll take it from there myself?" Solicitor refused that option point blank. All I wanted was free or cheap guidance on filling in that form. I'd made that clear from the start. But both the CAB guy and the solicitor tried to impose their own agenda. My suspicion is that the adviser tried to scaremonger me into buying into the costly services of his crony, which I didn't need. So I decided to trudge on alone and do the job myself, with the aid of the Web and my own brain. I could yet turn out to be wrong, but all the signs are that the spouse has backed down from the money demands. The process is slightly tricky here and there, but by no means impossible. And of course lawyers don't offer any warranty on their services. The adviser just didn't listen to me. They seemed to be trying to get shut of me ASAP from the moment I arrived. Try them if you wish, but don't be surprised if you get nowhere without thumping the table a bit, and even that might not get you the service they purport to offer. But, my experiences might not be typical.