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Being screwed AGAIN by the Social Security Administration!

A couple of days ago we received a letter from the Social Security Administration stating that our SSI benefits would be stopped because our income was too high. If our income was genuinely too high then we would have just accepted it and moved on with our lives. But what they claim we reported is over $2000 more than what we actually received. See my MicroBLOG for more on this.

So today, my wife Erin called up the SSA, because they won’t talk to me because I am not Conner’s biological father, but I’m his father in every other way. First of all, the rep was rude and constantly talked over us, then became very accusatory, saying that we reported over $4,300 and that is why our benefits stopped, which just shows he didn’t listen in the slightest to what our concerns were.

Later in the call, he said we had to go through the long winded and deeply flawed appeal process, we didn’t accept that answer and asked to speak to a supervisor. The rep told us that he couldn’t put us through to a supervisor, but he would ask a supervisor to call us back. We didn’t accept that answer either as we know that the supervisor will not call back, we’ve been down this road previously!

All they have to do is correct the income figure, we can provide evidence of income if necessary; the last time we appealed, they rejected our appeal out of hand, claiming we didn’t provide evidence. They didn’t ask for any evidence as we requested a formal appeal where we would provide evidence at the appeal meeting. Four months later we finally got it sorted out when we managed to get through to someone that actually had a brain. That rep recognised the issue immediately and simply corrected the mistake, we had told the initial rep what the issue was four months earlier!

I found myself getting very angry with the rep because he wasn’t at all listening to what we were saying, cutting my wife off mid sentence, and completely refused to acknowledge me at all. I basically called him a “useless idiot”, my wife is gesticulating at me like I am not helping, but if he can not show respect for us, then I am sure as hell not going to show him any, no f**king chance!

Anyway, the net result is that we will visit the local SSA office directly and talk to someone there in the remote hope that they will be more useful. But to be honest, at this point I’m thinking about just giving the finger to the SSA and cutting all ties and getting Healthwave instead, we can survive without the $363 we used to get each month! I am sick of having to fight SSA incompetence!

Read all about our previous dealings with the Social Security Administration [here]
Update [Apr, 16 2013, 17:12]: My wife, Erin called the local SSA office today and talked to a gentleman who acknowledged the issue and corrected it by simply changing the amount of income for March. Why couldn’t the idiot on the national customer service line do this instead of being rude and condescending, or say something like this “call the local office and they will be able to assist you better”. Customer service in the USA is truly awful with a few exceptions.

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