Has anyone been able to successfully file for Social Security benefits?

[Arjun]

Has anyone been able to successfully file for Social Security benefits?
The verification process is horrendous 1). the .gov system is unable to verify that the phone number is associated with my name 2). The .gov system instructs me to head to my nearest post office to resume the verification process
Has the system always been this broken?
Do they not know that Americans are not stupid that families share multiple phone lines on one account? Or was the system simply made to be broken from the very beginning of time ?

 

[tigerwillow1]

I filed too long ago to remember too much other than it was pretty easy. It helped having an SS office close by and just going there to do it. As far as the account sharing goes, it's not just the government. My wife can't get an online account at one of our medical providers because we have the same email address.

 

[VorlonFrog]

I filed with Medicare a few months ago, and did not have any problems. I plan to file for SS in January. Thanks for the warning.

 

[tigerwillow1]

I have a story of incompetence that isn't related to the difficulty of filing. My wife gets a small outside-of-SS monthly retirement payment, which was subject to WEP (Windfall Elimination Provision, repealed early 2025). We dutifully reported this to SS at the local office when it started. I had calculated beforehand what her benefit reduction would be. At the local office, they apply a "rule of thumb" to calculate the benefit reduction, which is correct almost all of the time, but with her benefit being as small as it is, the rule of thumb gives the wrong answer. Arguing and debating got me nowhere, and besides reducing the benefit too much, they retroactively recovered months of "overpayment".

There's an appeal process to a higher SS office which I took, submitting the calculation step-by-step straight out of the published SS procedures. The appeal was denied, saying the rule of thumb is correct. I wonder if whoever processed it even looked at and/or understood the calculation?

About a year later I started my SS, which also upped the wife's payment because of the spousal benefit. Because of the way these things interact, the WEP reduction turned into a WEP bonus, and she started receiving a bigger payment that she should have. (Once again, the dollar difference isn't very significant).

Then in early 2025, with the letter about WEP going away, we got a notice that she has been getting overpaid and had to pay back the accumulated $601 overpayment through reduced benefits. over a few months. The way they presented the calculations was extremely hard to follow. So after getting too high of payments, somebody finally programmed the computer correctly and we got dinged. And actually, this IS Trump's fault for getting rid of the WEP.

 

[Mike A.]

I did about a year ago without any major troubles. I did have one issue with their system wanting me to present a marriage license even though I wasn't applying for spousal benefits. I think because I'd gone in and played with things at some point earlier just to see how the benefits compared. Couldn't get it to let go of that. Have an office close to the house here so was easy to go in and wasn't too long of a wait. They said 'Naaa... don't need that, you're good' and I was done.

Make sure that you look closely at where it asks when you want benefits to start. If I remember right, you have several options. You want to pick the one that says something to the effect of start from the date that you're eligible so you'll get back benefits from that time with your first actual payment. How that works out depends on age and when you're applying I suppose.

 

[Arjun]

Had to go through ID.me to complete verification process; an actual human had to verify documents through a live online video meeting

 

[TonyR]

Had to go through ID.me to complete verification process; an actual human had to verify documents through a live online video meeting

Yeah, stupid native Android phone's fucntion to image front & back of my driver's license kept running out of memory, crashing, etc. so also had to do a live meeeting via video. The whole process sucked.

Funny, I had no problem scanning same docs several times to hospital during my radiation and chemotherapy earlier this year. Just let the gov't get involved and a usually simple and reliable process becomes unnecessarily complicated and non-functional.