Merilee Murray

Review of SSA; Thanksgiving Point

My Social Security retirement benefits were suspen...

My Social Security retirement benefits were suspended because the Social Security Administration doesn t have a sufficient character limit for my address. Really. I have received numerous letters & notifications from SSA even though Dr. (Drive) was eliminated from the address. In fact, the notice that I was suspended came to me addressed that way. I called the 800 number & was on hold for over an hour. The representative said it would be fixed & my retirement restored. So did the second representative. And the third. The fourth, Kathy, told me that if I wanted the character limit to be addressed I needed to contact Congress. Apparently, this issue is of such magnitude that Senator Mike Lee, Senator Mitt Romney, and Representative John Curtis need to personally intervene. Ok then. She also said that I needed to appear in person at the South Jordan office to prove my identity as someone in that office had flagged it in such a way that that was the only option. I asked to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor eventually called the office and, presumably, my benefits will be restored, however my next payment shows as 0.00, which is considerably less than a lifetime of good faith payments dictates. The supervisor called South Jordan again. Presumably, if the date of payment passes with no deposit, I am to call the South Jordan office and they will (uh huh) put through a critical payment which will take up to five days to process. So to recap, this entire fiasco, spending in excess of four hours on the phone with SSA representatives (8 phone calls so far), having my benefits suspended WITH an in-person, identity verification caveat, is because of an inadequate address character limit (and a complete breakdown in the ability of 800 representatives to adequately comprehend and correct the problem). It s almost funny. Almost.