There is a federal Plain Language Act that is supposed to require agencies to use, well, plain language when communicating with the public. The private Center for Plain Language issues a yearly report card on how well agencies comply with the Plain Language Act. This year's report card is reproduced below. Note that they're only evaluating two web pages for each agency -- Contact Us and FOIA Request. They're not looking at ordinary written communications from each agency. I think that if they were to look at written communications Social Security would score much lower. Consider the letter that starts "Upon receipt of your request for reconsideration ..." When do you think that was last revised in any substantive way? Perhaps the 1980s?
18 comments:
A+ .. got to be kidding ... many notices do not make sense at .. the evaluation process is clearly flawed using on 2 elements for a report. The SSA big shots will puff out their chests w/ this one. LMAO
I cannot tell you how many calls I get from family and friends over the bizarre letters that SSA sends out. These are generally smart, well educated people. They all have the same question "But what does it mean?!" A+ is a joke.
be careful what you ask for. The easier and better they make the system the less they need a rep.
Not sure if they still send them but ages ago they sent letters saying your next payment will be $400. This pays you through 03/32. After that you will receive $500 per month. Many thought their next check was dropping $100 and normal benefits would return. No problem. No, you are having your entire check withheld for ages but we can't say that clearly.
I've had to read their letters a couple times sometimes to understand them, but in general, they're easier to understand than other agencies. Could it be better? Yes.
10:21, I don't think we ever need to worry about Social Security Efficiencies putting reps out of a job!
SSA’s letters are not an A+ but they are not as confusing or as bad as they’re made out to be on here.
SSA started the “plain language” years ago and a lot of letters have become less confusing.
One of the biggest issues in my area is claimants don’t read the letters or possible can’t read the letters. I work in a lower income area and education is an issue. Plain language won’t help them anyway.
From my experience, a lot of the issues with the more terribly-drafted notices from SSA to the public are simply failure to include language, etc., not so much that the language employed isn't plain/on no higher than a 6th grade level or whatever.
They just don't put in enough relevant information (read: spend zero time on the notice after the shell is created) to let the recipient know what's actually going on in many cases!
The majority of the notices are automated so there is no ability to change anything if we wanted.
The few that aren’t automated are generally fill in the blanks. Things like dates or documents needed or pronouns.
I can’t even imagine what the letters would look like if they let employees actually “draft” notices for actions.
@2:07 -- you mean overpayment notices that say "you were overpaid because we paid you too much" aren't helpful?
There are some where we have to manually fill in the reason but that’s only for SSI and the reasons are “canned”.
Are some people lazy and send it without the reason, sure.
In my experience though, the reason for the overpayment is irrelevant because most of the time the claimants don’t bother to read it and just want to dispute it with zero proof.
The reason I get for most appeals is “it’s not fair”. That may be true, but I can’t olapprove an appeal because you don’t agree with the law or policy like windfall or how wages are posted.
I’m always willing to take the time to explain any notice necessary if the person needs assistance.
The problem isn't so much the language; it's that they don't convey the crucial information in a good way, or just flat-out don't include it.
Examples:
1. One of the most common calls we get is, for example, "why am I not getting my check in March", because any letter that mentions a change in payment says something like "you will get your payment for March on April XX". This is the terrible way SSA picks to say "your benefits are paid a month after your entitlement, so for example blah blah".
2. Disability recipients hitting full retirement age are almost guaranteed to call us worried that their benefits have been cut off, because they get the "Your Ticket to Work was terminated" letter, whether or not they ever actually used a Ticket to Work. Nowhere on this letter does it mention that their disability entitlement has now transitioned into retirement, a technical change that does not affect their money at all, and one which means we no longer track or limit their work.
3. Overpayment letters are the absolute worst ones we send out. Title 16 letters are (mostly) automatically generated, with the barest generic explanation of the cause of the overpayment. The manually generated ones (manual because something on their record gave the program fits, requiring a Customer Service Representative to create one) range from well-detailed to terribly childishly written ones with poor grammar and no real explanation.
The worst, however, are Title 2 overpayment letters. These are generated by the Payment Center, and WITHOUT FAIL, they will say something like "we will explain further in this letter why you were overpaid", and then they never will. They are one of our most common phone calls.
The decisions are far worse. In my time I’ve seen the focus go from “dear claimant this is why we think you are not disabled” to ok, Appeals Council and district court here is why we denied.
I have a PhD and the COLA and award letters are very confusing! Maybe, I need some additional education?
Really? I think those are pretty straight forward. They even have the table with the gross and all the deductions prior to showing the net deposit.
I thought those were some of the clearer notices we have. Purely anecdotal, but I rarely get calls or people coming in for those. Overpayment letter in the other hand, those are hot or miss.
Apparently this is grading on a curve. Some of the manual notices that come out of the PC are so opaque that I joke with callers that they came out of the Division of Confusing Letters and then proceed to translate them into plain English. . .
Written notices have recently become worse than they already were. There's an occasional statement that is just plain wrong!
Overpayment notices are the worst! Most provide no clue about how the overpayment happened and that’s one of the first things the public wants to know. I mean I would want to know as well if someone sent me a letter saying I was overpaid and now have to pay back X amount of dollars. A letter with a complete breakdown of when and why it occurred would negate lots of phone calls and office visits. Just my two cents
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