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Right now, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has several ways for you to access information about your Social Security and disability benefits. Whether it’s online, on the phone or at your Social Security office, accessing information about your benefits is easy, or at least it should be. Some critics are complaining that the customer service from the SSA has been lacking, and new policies could make that service even harder to manage.
Is the Service at the Social Security Administration Going to Get Worse?
You’ve probably heard horror stories about people who called the SSA for help with their benefits only to find that they couldn’t sort the problem out over the phone. Sometimes these people would even use the internet service—my Social Security—to try to clear up these complications. However, this song and dance usually ends at the Social Security office. Having a live person help you sort out your difficulties usually works best when everything else fails, but it can get crowded at these offices.
To keep you from needing to visit your local SSA office frequently, the administration has been sending out earnings and estimated benefits statements. If you are over 25, weren’t receiving Social Security benefits and you hadn’t registered for my Social Security online, then you would receive one of these statements every five years—people over 60 would get them every year. These statements were meant to help people sort through some of their questions, but a new SSA policy is changing that.
The agency will now only send these statements to people over 60, leaving people planning their retirement and people with disabilities to figure out the details of their benefits by phone or online. This plan should save the agency around $11.3 million, but there could be consequences.
How Could Ending Statements Affect You?
Without these paper statements, more people will have to rely on phone and internet services to get the Social Security info that they need. If they can’t get the answers they need from those sources, then they will have to return to their local SSA office. That could mean more visitors to the SSA office, which could increase wait times and slow down service.
Do you think reducing costs by limiting statements-by-mail is a good idea? Head over to Twitter and Facebook and tell our Tulsa disability attorneys what you think. For more info about the changes in SSDI that you need to know about, keep following our blog.
