Dear All,

I am desperate for advice and guidance regarding university's relentless careless attitude towards my appeal with a total disregard towards my dignity.

With assistance from my solicitor my second appeal was submitted on 22nd of May to the university casework. I waited 7 days to receive acknowledgement from the university on how they were to progress my appeal.

The university only responded when I emailed them to remind them of procedure irregularities, as according to their own regulations I should of received an acknowledgement within 5 days of submission. However the university has failed to follow their own rules to handle my appeal.
What is worse is that they decided to treat my appeal as a complaint without providing me an explanation for doing so. I replied to the casework group, rejecting the way the university handled my case. They then decided to change their action and treat my case as an appeal. Accordingly as per university regulations, they sent my appeal document to my department for review and were supposed to reply back to me within 14 days. Yet again I have not received a response from the university and I am becoming wearisome of the university's appalling relentless attitude towards my appeal.

Please can anyone share their experiences and advice on how I can deal with the university in order to move them to handle my case fairly and honestly as per university regulations.

I'm not surprised that you are facing this sort of problem.
All large organisations are like this because there is nothing in it for them to make these things easy for you.

They want you to give up and go away.
When you take on any appeal such as this you need to be prepared to hassle them until they do what they say they will do in their procedures. You might even find that their procedures state that they "should" respond within a certain timescale rather than "must". There's a big difference and I'm betting they state the former. You should check this.

Other than that, I'm afraid you have to settle in for a long fight.
It took me over a month to get them to send me my PhD certificate after I'd paid for it many months prior to that. They eventually sent it in a plain brown unmarked cylinder tube rather than a formally labelled uni tube in a clearly petty response to my continually emailing them.

You need to be sure you can handle this sort of nonsense or it could very easily grind you down.

I’m sorry they are treating you so appallingly. Are you in the Uk? If so I would recommend that if you have completed your universities appeal process that you send your complaint for review to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education

Thank you all for your kind replies. I left the UK due to visa curtailment. I am still in the middle of my second appeal which I found my department commented on it by using my mental health against my PhD proceeding. I looked at the OIA website, it states that only when the internal formal appeal has been completed, I can apply for my case to the OIA.