You absolutely will not believe what I’m about to tell you. I will hold the Moot Explanation till the end.
Background on my mother who is 67, just suffered a stoke 3 months ago, worked a mans job while she collected a measly $500 a month SS benefits until my father passed several years ago and she started receiving his benefits as they were married for more than 25 years. She had a heart attack last year in which she had to stop working.
She receives a letter in the mail Sept 22 from the Social Security office stating they are going to re-evaluate her benefits to now include the money she contributed while she was working and collecting.(great)
On the 10th of October, she gets some mail from the bank stating her bank account is over drafted multiple times as her house payment is with the same bank and they take it out of her account automatically and the checks she wrote for car payment and grocer also were Non Sufficient Funds. I go to the bank for her and find that Social Security made no deposit to her account.
It’s one thing to re-evaluate but another to stop payments without warning.
A stop at the local SS office and they do not understand what is up. The family quikly gets some money deposited in her account before the fees hemorage the rest of a check if and when she gets it. They submitted paperwork that was going to take 3 to 4 days to get a reply from. So we wait 6 as one day is a holiday.
This next visit to the office we are told they still know nothing and I ask if there is someone else I can call or go see to speak with in this matter of missing SS deposit (direct deposit) and I am told NO, There is no one you can speak with. I simply state that since you are the one and only you will be seeing a lot of me until I know she is getting her money as scheduled and I know why this happened.
They do an emergency or “hardship” release of funds to her account to hold her over but as I explained, That will take care of the bank and credit fees so what will she live on?
A few days later, She receives a letter in the mail stating that they have recalculated her benefits to include the income contributions she made since 1996 and was going to pay her $348 to make up in the lost time she contributed while she collected. This also states that they are not done with the case yet. This is dated Oct 17th.
After receiving a letter on Oct 23rd that merely stated they deposited the “Hardship money” , I decided to call the number listed on the paper to see if anyone could do anything before her bills come due next month.
This is the first part I do not believe. For one, the Automated Speaker in the menu keeps spending a lot of time telling me all of these web addresses to get answers to my questions. Now if this was my mother calling she would be totally lost as well as all the other elderly who have never touched a computer in their life. I have seen some pretty crazy automated menu systems for the phone but the system at the SS office takes the cake hands down!
Having spoke with my mothers bank and several banks I deal with about this, I come to find there were a lot of folks who were in the same boat and did not receive their direct deposit of SS benefits. I wonder just how long they can deal with this. (I hope they have more money in reserves than my mother).
To continue with my call… After doing a 8 minute Q & A with the computer via touch tone phone, I wait an additional 20 minutes for someone to speak to me. Then the system takes me back to the beginning of the Q & A and determined to get through to someone no matter how long it takes as I’m not working, I wait an additional 12 minutes before I get to speak to a person.
This is where I re-explain the entire story and ask why was her check stopped for this month? How long does this take to resolve? Who is actually making these decisions? is there anyone else I can talk to on the matter? No questions answered but the last question is answered with I can’t talk to anyone else in the matter.
At this point if this was you or your mother or father, you would want to be calling your congressman right about now and I wanted to and may still but I came to realize the politics of this situation. Its about Budgets. Let me explain.
You see, it’s about budget time in Congress and all departments of the government are worried about cuts to their budget. As I have seen in other areas of the Government both US and State and even at Local/County level, someone who wants to apply pressure to keep or extend funding to their department stages a problem that can only be fixed with money. These normally only happen where a deciding politician can be embarrass and in this case it is Congress and they are the sole authority in all spending in this county.
So knowing this, do I still want to call my US representative and stage a picket with all the elderly I found with the same problem at the local SS office and invite the Media? (its kinda like giving them what they want)
Actually, I think that they should cut the SS budget! Why? Because they seem to have a bunch of folks working that can not do anything, can not answer questions and only tell me they can not forward me to a higher dept or person that can handle it so why do we need them? They could have done that with the automated teleperson that everyone hates, so their job is not really needed.
Of course Nothing I have said or done has helped my mom know where she stands with SS and I am furious and frustrated and feel very sorry for some of the Seniors that do not have a caring son or daughter that might handle this for them and my story continues another day. I would like to hear yours if you or your parents did not get your check.