Patchogue Continued Ineptitude

I submitted an application on December 3, 2013 to the Patchogue field office. The application was sent no less than 20 times due to our experience with that office losing or "never receiving" the paperwork. SS requires originals of some of the documents and those are mailed the same day the application is faxed. Somehow, this office never seems to get their mail, because they are forever accusing us of not mailing originals. Because of their ineptitude, we now ask claimants to send us duplicate orgininals so we are prepared to mail them again, when Patchogue claims not to have received them.

My office has been calling on this application since December, including calling the Office of Public Affairs. However, it is impossible to call and speak to anyone at the Patchogue office since they have all their phone calls rerouted to Social Security's national number. This does not help since they cannot tell us if Patchogue has received anything from us. We were forced to fax Patchogue letters, asking them to call us regarding this claimant since we cannot reach them by phone. They did not, and have not called us. We were assured in February by Public Affairs that Patchogue was overwhelmed and backlogged with work but would get the application processed.

My office spoke to Public Affairs again in April, only to be told that Patchogue claimed they had never received the original documents. My office mailed them our "duplicate" originals that same day. Today, Public Affairs advised me, almost 9 months after the application was originally submitted, and 4 months after the "duplicate" originals were mailed, that Patchogue still says they never received the original forms and cannot process the application. Patchogue even went as far as to lie to Public Affairs by telling them they sent us a letter stating this. We have not received any correspondence from them regarding this claimant.