From some
Tulsa TV station that only wants to be known as "2":
There's a lot to ponder, Charles says, during his daily walks.
How do you recover, he wonders, after a drunk driver kills your adult son? ...
It only turned worse, when the emotional grief turned to financial turmoil.
Since
his son's first and last names were the same as Charles', social
security mistakenly thought it was Charles, Sr who had passed away. ...
Then, the Social Security Administration took back the $1200 it had just
deposited into Charles' bank account, causing checks to bounce. ....
Charles says he called at least ten times to get it resolved, without any luck. ...
After several phone calls and emails, we went to the social security
administration's regional office and were able to help resolve Charles'
problem, by getting his money back and his benefits reinstated.
Sadly, mistakes like this are inevitable. The key is getting them corrected quickly. They don't get corrected as quickly as they should not because Social Security's personnel are lazy or uncaring or incompetent. Sure there's some of that at Social Security and every other large entity in the U.S. but that's not the real reason these problems aren't corrected quickly. It's because there just aren't enough Social Security personnel to take care of problems quickly. It's obvious at ground level that mistakes take longer to correct now than they did before Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives in 2010 and began cutting the agency's budget. I cringe when I see a simple mistake such as misreading an Administrative Law Judge's decision and starting benefits later than they should have been started. I know it's going to take at least a few weeks and maybe a few months to correct this sort of simple mistake.
7 comments:
Why always the shots at the REpublicans? thsi problem has been around prior to that when the Dems had the POTUS, Senate and House. Geeeesh, give it a rest..
if i did my way they do i would be fired. its the same way with any thing u do over the phone. when we it took 3 times just to change banks with me calling twice to make sure they did it. i was lucky i moved not to far from where we lived and had enough gas to my old bank.
I'm assuming he did more than just call 10 times or email prior to going to the regional office for help. SSA wouldn't have been able to handle the matter over the phone.
CR cannot do a resurection over the phone, you have to see the person in office to get it done. Would it not have been easier to go to the local office? Somehting in the story does not ring entirely true. We are missing a few puzzle peices here.
I agree the agency is understaffed at the FO, DO level. The agency keeps hiring ALJs and support staff, but makes no effort to fortify the front line offices. Methinks there is a fire station or two being closed. If they could just make it annoying to Congress like late flights to fund like the FAA did.
@ 5:23pm: No such luck, Repubs have wanted to kill Social Security since 1935, if they get a majority in the US Senate in 2014 and keep control of the House in 2014, Repubs may try to kill Social Security, voters be damned, Repubs only care about their rich campaign contributors, this must not be allowed to happen.
Interesting comments considering the DEMs pander and sell lies to the most vulnerable in the country. Promising a way out while actually buying their votes while enslaving them to the government dole. It's a sad state of affairs these days.
He supposedly called 10 times to get issue resolved--if he called 800#, they could not have helped him and may have just sent referral to FO. FO's have different procedures that TSR's have no knowledge or comprehension of. Some offices do not make PE appts--it is all walk in. Good luck with that. Or appts may have not been available for 3-4 weeks, and he did not want to wait so kept calling back, as people do, to get a different answer. There are many reasons--some staffing-related, some claimant-related, as to why people end up going through this type of scenario. Of course, the media never gets the story straight, anyway.
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