From the Washington Post:
The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk. ...
Depending on the time of day, a recorded message [on the 800 line] tells callers that their wait on hold will last more than 120 minutes or 180 minutes. Some report being on hold for four or five hours. A callback function was only available three out of 12 times when a reporter for The Post called the toll-free line last week, presumably because the queue that day was so long that the call would not be returned by close of business. ...
On Monday, Dudek said the agency is working with U.S. Postal Service on an agreement to take on new requirements to verify claimants’ identities. ...
Meanwhile, a DOGE-imposed spending freeze has left many field offices without paper, pens and the phone headsets staff need to do their jobs communicating with callers — at the exact moment phone calls are spiking, the employee in Indiana said.
The freeze drove all federal credit cards to a $1 limit. Social Security saw the number of its approved purchasers reduced to about a dozen people for 1,300 offices, said one agency employee in the Northeast.
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5 comments:
Sure the Post Office will help...especially since DeJerk opened the door for Sleazy E and his Peter Pan Posse to come in and sabotage it.
How is the post office going to verify IDs? Instead of an SS office will people visit the post office?
The post office they want to privatize? The post office that is backed up doing their own work because of staffing shortages without having to do whatever this cockamamie plan is? That post office?
USPS already does in-person proofing for login.gov at selected sites, so it's not really new that they could help someone get the verification needed for setting up a mySocialSecurity account. It seems fine to me if someone wants to go about it that way--maybe a post office is closer to their house than an SSA field office is, or maybe they have other business they need to do with USPS anyway. But for a lot of people, this seems like a wasted step--"go to the post office, verify your id, make an account, request direct deposit change" versus "go to the field office and request direct deposit change" or the pre-Dudek option of "call SSA and request direct deposit change." Even more true for people who want to apply for benefits, especially if it's something they can't do online like SSI or survivors benefits.
What's going on is terrible...
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