I was always under the impression that the time something was sent was what mattered, not necessarily when it arrived. In the past I've successfully argued that bill payments were sent on time because the postmark is dated before the payment due date, even if the thing arrived after the due date (thanks to our wonderful postage system).

Stil... sending something at a minute before the absolute final deadline. Definitely a student.

Definitely a student!

untreated medical condition - I didn't know that laziness was classed as a medical condition...

prepared the claim form from scratch at a 30 wpm typing speed - surprising he didn't include Microsoft in the claim for losing his work or other such whining...

This is other people's livelihoods he is messing with, not just another project assignment, he needs a lesson in real life, I am sure that prison life will give him ample opportunity to mix with a potential new client base.

£120 per hour and late.... definitely a LAW student

This isn't a private industry that might be worried about customer satisfaction. It's the government. They set the rules to reflect their convenience, not the customer's. Since they state explicitly that the requirement is for when they receive it, the law student hasn't a case.

.... that he's found guilty and banned from practising law again. Seriously do we want numpties like this further expanding the legions of numpties we already have in the law system.

a post mark is offical, the timestamp of your own email server is not, only the recieving email server can be validated.

Mind you to realise it was late change clock and send in under 8 seconds is probably not possible.

The only claim would be a relay servers datestamp in the header but this is all waived by the recieved time disclaimer.

"The claim was sent by Neckles at one minute to midnight, but did not reach the servers of the Employment Tribunal until eight seconds after midnight"

And what joker would normally wait until the *very last minute* to submit something important?

Really, lets hope he (and others) learn to do stuff on time and with an adequate margin for realistic problems (server down, printer broken, ISP doing maintenance at 'porn surfing' hours, etc).

As said already, an obvious student...

I wonder when the record the time of receipt? Is it at the very start of the script or is it after the message has been processed, validated and stored in their database. Admittedly, it would have to be a very complex or poorly written script if it takes 9 seconds to process a single claim, however it is a Government IT system.

re: if he had a medical condition making it difficult for him to keep deadlines he should have proper systems in place once the claimant had put him in charge of the case.

So there could be a medical reason why I can't hit deadlines; this is good news.

...make him The Famous (N)eckles...?

<Bluebottle>

YOU ROTTEN SWINE, YOU!

</Bluebottle>

I bet no-one checked the server's time against 'official' GMT.

It could turn out that the server was 10 seconds too fast.

A bit late to check now though.