You’ll do the phone interview instead?
In all seriousness, I’m really upset about this. I literally almost never talk on the phone at all, it legitimately will give me so much anxiety just anticipating it, let alone doing it.
But I have no choice. I don’t feel like this is right at all. All I know is I was given a deadline that is less than 2 weeks from now, and if I don’t do the update (through Claim Lab or phone interview), they are terminating my benefits and closing my claim.
I think that considering the phone interview issue is actually related to the very reason I’m disabled, it’s particularly twisted to put me in this position.
When my file was moved to the long duration (or whatever its called) team last year, I stopped having a claims manager specifically assigned to my file. I have no contact person in this new department. Either I write an email to a generic inbox and the turnaround time is over 10 days before I get any reply. Or I call and get whatever agent takes the call.
When I get an email reply, I do have a real person’s email contact but they rarely give any of the information I ask and push for me to call instead. I had another issue a few weeks ago and had to call because my questions weren’t being answered by email. The person was super nice, clearly understood what I was explaining and what I needed but the person who them took over to send me the documents totally missed the boat and I didn’t get what I needed at all. So back to square one. I’m deciding if it’s worth trying again.
But with this update, it’s like I’m in my own. The person who has refused any accommodation for the update isn’t budging and I feel powerless. Because I had to fight to get my claim approved in the beginning and ended up filing a complaint through the ombudsman after 8 months, the person that reviewed my complaint/appeal and approved it, was actually the person in charge of the claims managers. And because of what happened to me, I got an apology and I got honestly the best claims manager for quite a long time.
I got the sense that they were easier on me because of the eff up and the chaos is caused in my life for those 8 months without income. (when I ordered a copy of my file last year, I realized they actually spared me the in person IME and had a report done based on my medical notes and specialist reports. I wondered why they never requested me to get an IME, I didn’t even know they just did all of that without me having to go through it. The full report is in my file, that’s the only reason I know)
And the one time I had an issue, when my amazing claims manager moved on and someone else took over and was threatening to cut off my benefits (I’ve posted about this), I was able to cc the person in charge who had been the one who reviewed my complaint. The issue was resolved the next day. Now I have nothing of that. I don’t have any contact or any recourse.
I’m really upset.
Would you really do that if you had to do the phone interview? I’m not going to but genuinely wondering how you and @jammer would get out of having to do the update by phone or through Claim Lab…
Help 