Quote:
Originally Posted by Janke
Today is 11/27/10. If a claim is not filed with SSA or an intent to file a claim is not established in 11/10, it is possible that you will have lost one month's worth of benefits. If you can put everything together before Tuesday and have time to go to your local office and hope that the walk-in traffic is light enough, then going to your office on Monday or Tuesday is a viable idea. The most important thing, though, is to establish the intent to file and then file the claim within 60 days. You can accomplish that by calling the 800# and asking for an appointment or by submitting a claim online before Tuesday. I think it makes the most sense to be thorough from the beginning and not assume that SSA will fill in the missing pieces.
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Thanks for the info Janke but, I was advising Westwood. I believe Westwood lives in Oregon and it could be a small town where you can walk in and be seen pretty quickly. When I lived in South Florida I would sometimes accompany some of my clients to the agency, but never without an appointment, which even with an appointment it would still be a good 2 hr wait. and found it necessary to straighten out up to three different letters from three different people, for instance one from the district manager(Dana) or regional commissioner)Paul) and sometimes there would be no name at all, all dated within a couple of days of each other. I always enjoyed the look on the agents face when they began reading all the inconsistent on the forms. For instance, one letter would have yellow markers accompanied with a post-it stating you need to fill this in, or you didn't send your birth certificate, but then another form would point out something totally different that was missed or needed. I found the local office very helpful because the agent would gather all the forms, go over them with the client, usually find that the missing forms were there rip up the unnecessary ones and reprint just one form properly filled out, which saved both my client and myself a lot of problems. Now that I live in a small town, if you wait 20 min. that's a long time. In my personal experience the 1-800# has never really helped, they seem to all have different opinions, some of them are very helpful where others act as if you are bothering them and usually have the same information I have already submitted. I have also helped fill out forms online and have had both positive and negative results with that. Sometimes they claim they never received the form , even though I have the number that is given to you. Then they try to tell me I must have not submitted it ,which I know I did because I have a number, or that the information cannot be submitted at this time, so you have to save it and then keep trying to get it through. At other times it went right through. I agree that Windwood needs to get this filed a.s.a.p. because the date of the application helps guide when the disability began. The holidays do slow things down so, I would get it done soon.