Oct 22, 2015

Online Appeals System Problems

     I'm hearing many complaints about Social Security's system for filing appeals online. Attorneys are required to use the system but it's unreliable. Much of the time when you try to access the system online you get a message that "This page does not exist."

13 comments:

jehu said...

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Happened to me yesterday at my computer, yet everyone else in the office was able to access. Thought it was very odd

Anonymous said...

Sounds like somebody is black listed. Or uses internet explorer. I'm not sure what is worse.

Anonymous said...

You have to keep trying until it lets you in. Kind of frustrating but it eventually works

Anonymous said...

A billion dollar computer system that doesn't work on the first, second, third ... try. This agency is increasingly pathetic.

Anonymous said...

If you're having trouble getting into any of the online services (ERE, online appeals, applications), try clearing your cookies and browsing history. I'm not sure why it works but their help desk told us that and it has worked.

Annie42 said...

After this happened multiple times to me, I sent a message to the help desk through the website. They responded that they could not help me because I did not provide a printout of the page with the client's SSN on it, and even though the error page does not have anything about the client on it, it just says, "this page does not exist."

Anonymous said...

I am saddened to hear that SSA does not provide the customer service our most vulnerable citizens deserve.

Anonymous said...

It has been working off and on.

It seems to depend on where you try to access the appeal page. The link is obviously broken in some way but the persistence of the problem suggests that the computer techs at SS either don't understand the problem, don't know how to fix the problem, or haven't bothered to see what they can do.

And I also send multiple e-mails addressing the specifics of the problem to the e-mail shown on the error page and got only an automated response.

Anonymous said...

Issue happens in Chrome as well @11:12

Anonymous said...

The IT department is working on the issue and will get to it as soon as they clear their backlog. Unfortunately, their backlog is similar to the rest of the agency and it might take up to 2 years for you to get any results.

Anonymous said...

Despite the problems, we are regularly assailed by technophiles at SSA who don't think that the public should have access to live customer service at field offices and that all business should be done online. I tried to file online for retirement benefits for 2 months before I finally bit the bullet, went to the local FO, waited 45 minutes, and finally got my application done in 10 minutes.

Anonymous said...

It's all a ploy to get Congress to authorize a bigger budget.

Anonymous said...

I had a problem, but changed the url from "socialsecurity.gov...." to "ssa.gov...." and it worked for me, a couple of times. Haven't had the problem lately, though I changed my shortcut to use the "ssa.gov" url