From a
report by the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Aging (footnotes omitted):
The impact of these service
reductions [at Social Security] has been felt in field office waiting rooms and on the
phone. In March 2013, SSA [Social Security Administration] estimated that in a single week nearly 12,000 visitors to field offices would
have to wait over
two
hours to be served, a figure that had
almost
tripled in
the previous
four months. Between FY
[Fiscal Year] 2010 and January of FY
2013, the average wait time for field office visitors without
appointments increased by 40 percent.
NCSSMA [National Council of Social Security Management Associations] reports that in FY
2013, the percentage of visitors who
waited over three
weeks for an appointment was over 43 percent, compared to only 10 percent a year
earlier.
According to
NCSSMA, as of early 2014, the average wait time for visitors to SSA’s field offices
was 31.5 minutes, an all
-
time high and 240 percent longer than
it was
three
years
ago.
From FY
2011 to FY
2013, the agent busy rate experienced by callers to SSA’s 800
- number
increased from 3 percent to 12 percent, with SSA projecting
that in FY 2014, 14 percent
of callers would
get a busy signal when they tried to call. In the beginning of FY
2014, 800-number callers
who were
able to get through were waiting an average of over 17 minutes – more than three times as long as the average waits of five minutes in FY 2012, according to NCSSMA ...
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