From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
For a “real lesson in torture,” try calling your local Social Security Administration office with a question.
That’s what Marcia Chestnut, a 62-year-old former housekeeper from Philadelphia, sardonically suggests.
In February, Chestnut — who lives with various disabilities — received a notice from the SSA saying her benefits would be cut off by April.
To find out why, Chestnut phoned her local SSA office every weekday for two months. She’d get put on hold for four hours or longer, then the calls would be disconnected.
“Live people don’t answer,” she said. “You’re not getting anybody who’ll talk to you.” …
We spend a lot of time calling Social Security offices on people’s behalf — sometimes 15 times a day,“ [a local advocate] said. ”We’re on hold for hours, then get AI bots spewing random information you never asked for before hanging up. …
18 comments:
Elections have consequences.
Can't anyone see SSA is floundering? The internal support components and employees are no longer there. They have been relagated to jobs for which they have no training or experience. It is vital to bring back those HQ and RO employees reassigned under duress. Hiring new employees and training them for front line jobs is the only real solution. AI is never going to replace the human factor in SSA. I don't believe POTUS knew what was really done by DOGE. Musk screwed it up and now, starting another party, will be using the SSA internal chaos up against him. I think POTUS was played.
This assumes the current party in power wants SSA to actually work and they have NEVER wanted it to be successful. The failure and dysfunction IS the goal. They have to make the situation untenable to the public so the public will go along with privatizing it. POTUS wasn't played. He's co-conspirator #1.
While wait times are long, I seriously doubt someone was on hold for four hours or more.
@3:37 is likely correct.....the call would have been disconnected after waiting an hour.
Why is no one publicly talking about field office representatives being pulled to answer the 800#? And how problematic this is?
This can’t be right. Frank’s latest post on SSA.gov is full of praise about how short the wait is on the phone and how the AI is solving this problem /s
The point is--THEY WERE NOT HELPED!!!!!!!!!!!!
False, the wait times today were 120+ minutes.
Also, they have taken 1k customer service reps from the field and put them on the 800# so field office in person and phone wait times are about to go up. They are considering taking 1k more as well.
Incorrect, 3 hour waits are very common. 4 hours is less common, but the 800# doesn’t disconnect after an hour.
That’s four hours?
You know what does answer the phone? The half of our service rep unit that helps people in person, processes paper workloads, and answers our local line. Because they just converted them into 1-800 number drones, and are not allowed to work on any office workload.
When I say it brought EVERYTHING in our office to a grinding halt, I am not exaggerating. Claims Specialists and Technical Experts are being forced to help with basic coverage, and our workloads are going to hell along with the CSRs.
It basically killed what morale was left. The email we got today saying "bonuses are on the way"? Screw you. Keep your bonus. Use it to hire someone. Then let us do our damn jobs, that's the only bonus I want
The robbing Peter to pay Paul method of solving problems!
I wouldn't be surprised if they paid the bonus in...CRYPTO...😏
I cannot speak to the person in the article, but I know I had to call on behalf of my disabled brother and was on hold for 3 hours before I got disconnected. I then tried to use the call back function, but never got a call back. The next day, I tried and got disconnected after two and a half hours. (I was doing other stuff, the call was on speaker). I eventually just went into the district office to get my questions answered.
I work here. It’s a DISASTEE
No one cares, all they do is bash and complain and keep taking away things from SSA employees..
They won’t fund us and won’t hire, expect more with less to starve agency from the inside out …. Make employees miserable, lie to the public all to prove a false narrative… We are witnessing the death of the agency .
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