With his 65th birthday approaching, Eric Martin of Arlington knew it was time to sign up for Medicare. Thirty phone calls, countless busy signals and an office visit later, he still couldn’t get the help he needed. ...
To get the ball rolling, Martin had called a national toll-free number listed on a document he received in the mail from the Social Security Administration. He was then given the phone number to its Mid-Cities field office in Grand Prairie.
That’s when the process ground to a halt.
Martin began calling the during the first week of September, with no luck.
By Sept. 24, Martin said, he had called about 30 times without getting through. So he went to the office, only to find it packed with people waiting to be seen. One person was being helped every 30 minutes, he said. By his calculation, that meant he would not be seen until the next day. ...
Nationally, more than 3 million people had a wait of more than an hour at field offices, the GAO [Government Accountability Office] said, citing the Social Security Administration but noting that it had not validated its data.
GAO also reported that more than half the people who call field offices get busy signals. ...
An employee there who would identify herself only as Miss Rojas told the Star-Telegram that the number of workers tending the phones depends on the line of people inside the building.
But Charlie Brittian, project manager for the administration’s Regional Public Affairs team, has a different take.
"We answer the phone all day long," she said and noted that the Mid-Cities office has 52 employees.
She said Martin’s experience is not common at the Mid-Cities office. The average wait time this year for individuals without appointments, like Martin, has been 35.6 minutes, Brittian said. Individuals with appointments averaged a wait of 4.8 minutes, she said.
Brittian also said the Mid-Cities office has a policy of returning calls that day, or, if necessary, the next morning.
Martin disagreed.
"That’s stupid," he said. "You don’t even get a recording, so how can they call back?"
Dec 2, 2009
Can't Get Through In Fort Worth
From the Fort Worth, Texas Star Telegram:
I have said it before. We will know that Social Security field offices are adequately staffed when they are able to dispense with secret telephone numbers which are supposed to be used only by family and friends of Social Security employees and by higher ups at Social Security who need to reach the office by telephone. Contrary to the opinion of many Social Security field office employees this is not a normal situation. Few businesses need private numbers like this so.
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7 comments:
Charles,
You state that having "secret telephone numbers" is not a normal thing and you seem to infer that having these numbers is a bad thing. I disagree. Businesses and government agencies ought to have a number for the public and a number and a non-public number. The non-public number is used for family members to contact employees in emergency situations or for those with-in the agency can contact an office. You state that few businesses need private numbers--I wonder if the call centers throughout the country have private numbers or if family members and others involved in the business must call the customer number. I also wonder if the businesses that don't have private numbers receive the phone traffic that a Social Security field office receives.
Charles, SSA is not a private business. You know this.
Sometimes when you get on your soapbox on these irrevelant issues, you sound a heck of a lot like Glen Beck (shudder).
Every SSA office has an administrative phone number. They always have had such a number, and probably always will in the future. Though it is on occasion used by the families of employees in an emergency, these instances are today very few and pretty far between given that almost everybody has a cell phone. In most offices, only management even has access to the admin line, so it isn't like employees are sitting around chatting on it all day long. The main purpose of the admin line is to give SSA offices the ability to call and receive calls from other offices and components on short notice.
Finally, how about you pull out the phone book and do a survey of the local businesses in your area. I bet you'll be shocked to discover that a lot of them (especially those conducting a lot of telephone business) have multiple lines which have unpublished numbers for other uses. Do you publish your internal phone numbers of your law firm so your clients can call you up direct anytime they want, or do you require your clients to go through your receiptionist??
Something to think about before you go casting stones in glass houses.
Actually, the administrative line is given out by the 800#, even though it is supposed to be verboten, when claimants call the 800# to complain that they cannot get through to the field office. SSA phone numbers, especially under the new VOIP system, are often not listed in the phone book, or are listed incorrectly. SSA phone service is atrocious. We have one person at a time answering the phone in a service area with well over 30,000 beneficiaries.
In our law firm, clients can call in directly to us and do NOT have to go through a receptionist. We have a high call volume, too.
Before a hearing, my clients get my PERSONAL cell phone number in case they have a need to reach me after hours before their hearing.
Customer service is something that matters to me and my firm.
I'm interested in knowing if the man is already receiving benefits and Medicare entitlement would occur automatically. Generally in these situations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would send the man a Medicare card approximately 3 months prior to his attainment of age 65. Of course, he also has the option of applying for benefits online and limiting the scope of the application to Medicare only if he chooses not to receive reduced benefits. Much ado about nothing.
Anonymous @ 1:54PM: I'm sure you have the same call rate as the local SS office and I'm sure you're taking interviews all day or working the front window or processing cases. I'm also sure you have 350 customers coming to see you everyday.
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