My firm has been experiencing even greater difficulties than usual communicating with Social Security since yesterday. There seem to be technical difficulties so that nothing is going through. I'm hearing reports that this problem extends at least into other parts of North Carolina and South Carolina.
How extensive is this problem?
13 comments:
It has been a problem throughout the New Jersey Pennsylvania area. The LIstServ is indicating this is pervasive. Have reached out to the Regional Office but no response as yet.
Same here in Norfolk, VA calling on VA and MD offices.
Nationwide issue yesterday and to start today. Phones in Indiana appear to be operational at this time.
I couldn't get through to the Toledo offices yesterday at all.
Same here in New Orleans I get a busy signal.
I tried to call an office in Minnesota today and was told the line was busy.
Yeah, it was a nationwide system failure for most of yesterday and a good chuck of today as well.
The downfall of being dependent on a nationwide VOIP system provided by the low government bidder. SSA apparently isn't any better at keeping it running than they are anything else. Last I heard, they were rebooting servers this morning trying to get it to work.
Gives those field staff a reprieve to tend to more pressing matters.
RE: Anonymous Anonymous said...
Gives those field staff a reprieve to tend to more pressing matters.
95% of calls made to Social Security from my firm are trying to get rep work processed so we can properly represent a claim and trying to get claimants allowances released to them so they can at least get by. These seem like pressing matters.
3:10
News flash - management could care less about your claimants allowances in my office.
I get 1/2 a day per week to work my allowances.
I get 1/2 per week to answer the phones.
The other 4 days are spent on redeterminations and CDR’s.
Hard to get those allowances done in 4 hours a week!
1/2 a day per week to answer phones? Lucky duck.
I'm barely able to finish my appointments, then am told to get on phones until my next appointment. Or try to call them early and get them done so I can answer phones. The only time we're allowed to work existing claims is before/after phones go live. They never, ever cease during the day to allow you to get anything done.
I understand reps and claimants getting huffy about not getting through on phones. It is bad customer service. But honestly, from my point of view? Broken phones was a godsend. I was able to clear several weeks' worth of backlog. If they stayed broken a few more days I'd be able to completely catch up.
If that offends any of you, sorry but not sorry. Those people in that backlog have pressing issues and deserve attention too. It's a zero-sum game. We have a limited amount of man-hours, and when we apply them in one area, another one loses. For the past year, the onslaught of phone calls to our office have made any claimants requiring development past the initial phone call suffer. Now the worm has (temporarily) turned.
If people reserved 1% of the ire they direct at SSA for the customer service issues, and called their Congresscritter, we'd probably get a budget approaching normalcy.
When I said I get 1/2 a day to answer phones, I mean that when I’m assigned to answer the GI line for the office. So for those few hours a week, I’m the only one answering the line. It’s awful, I can’t possibly answer enough calls to make the public happy.
Our office is in dire straits with proper staffing. We have lost 10 claims reps in the past 12 months. We have two left and they have hired 3.
I can’t answer the phones because we have 1 SSI claims rep (me) to service the entire office. We are a mostly SSI office. We got to new SSI hires but one quit already before the finished training. It’s an unmanageable situation.
I’m applying at other agencies hoping to get out the mess SSA has made during the pandemic. I really do feel for the public because the agency doesn’t care that your calls or not answered or your claims aren’t processed…your just numbers.
Telework aside, this agency is in the toilet!!!!
It seemed to be a problem one morning here in Greenville, Mississippi that I drove to the office to see what was going on. The security guard said nothing was going on but that people using AT%T service were having trouble getting through. It cleared up that afternoon.
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