Dear All

Thank you for your responses.

Just a small extract from Cskills response– strangely enough the response was bland, unproductive and a little aggressive:

“Our payment terms are 30 days from date of all invoices no matter what the service/goods you receive if we do not receive payment within those terms then you can expect chasing letters this is part of our automated financial procedure and we treat all our customers the same, we class good payers as paying within our terms and not when we receive payment. If you pay your invoices at the end of every month you run the risk of them being late and triggering our debt collection processes that are automatic. Should you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact me”

Nice to know their attitude to those who deliver their qualifications. My mind boggles over an Awarding Body that will actively disrupt the delivery of its qualifications because invoice and payment dates are slightly out of sync. Nice to see true evidence of what is important to these guys and who actually drives the sector.

Regards

Matthew Fletcher

Examinations Manager

College of North West London

From: The FE Exams Network mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rose.Lloyd
Sent: 28 October 2010 10:01
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Construction Skills

I face the same problem with Construction Skills. I am constantly arguing with them about invoices and the silly sum that they block our centre for.

Rose Lloyd

Exams Team Leader

Lewisham College

From: The FE Exams Network mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Graham Buss
Sent: 28 October 2010 09:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Construction Skills

Hi,

We’ve had exactly the same experience. They’ve closed down our online facility more than once over the past 2 years, together with several other threats. I now make a point of paying their invoices as quickly as I can, although with the volume of invoices I have to deal with, it’s inevitable that the odd one gets missed. If I get any problems now, our Finance Officer usually calls them to smooth things over.

The only other exam board where I’ve had similar problems is OCR. They blocked our access to the Interchange portal for 10 days earlier this due to an unpaid invoice of approx £100 that was for our Staff Development dept and nothing to do with exams. Despite my protests and assurances from our Finance Officer that the payment was in our BACS run, they refused to lift the block until they’d actually received payment.

Regards,

Graham Buss

Examinations Manager

East Berkshire College

From: The FE Exams Network mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Elaine Monks
Sent: 27 October 2010 15:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Construction Skills

Yep – I hear that. Have experienced similar and have highlighted that it is not efficient for my staff who make the registrations to have to monitor their CSkills account activity daily in order to pull off any invoices. And, yes, we received a threatening letter last month detailing two missed payments – one had only just come through on the online portal, and the other still has not appeared to this day. I therefore emailed our customer service adviser at CSkills who passed the email to CSkills Finance. Have not heard anything since.

It’s infuriating.

Elaine Monks

Assessments & Achievements Manager

Yeovil College - Exams

National centre number 63459

( 01935 845523

2 01935 429962

: www.yeovil.ac.uk

From: The FE Exams Network mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matthew Fletcher
Sent: 27 October 2010 14:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Construction Skills

Afternoon

Does anyone else have issues with Construction Skills and invoices.

I have just received a threatening legal letter chasing a small sum. These invoices were actually paid in our regular BACS at the end of this month – which they know – but, what the hell, let’s threaten a customer who pays their bills anyway. Then, we discover they closed down our online facility without warning over a week ago. You can register students, you just don’t get told that they will do nothing about it until your “debts” are cleared.

I’m first to hold up my hands when we’ve missed payments to awarding bodies and I tend to push extra payments through our Finance Section to resolve issues. But these guys beggar belief – aggressive, will not warn you, cannot seem to grasp the concept that we might run our BACS payments slightly out of sync with their accounting system, bland and obstructive when dealing with you over the phone and thoroughly inflexible.

I am making a formal complaint but would like to know of others experiencing similar low levels of service and communications – to give my complaint little more oomph, no names will be revealed.

Regards

Matthew Fletcher

Examinations Manager

College of North West London

Willesden Centre

Dudden Hill Lane

London

NW10 2XD

Tel: 020 8208 5083

Fax: 020 8208 5151

email: [log in to unmask]

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