How to schedule an appointment

[Dashinka 26,553]

A little venting here, so apologies.  The last time I worked with the SSA, we could walk in, but now apparently an appointment must be scheduled.  How does one navigate the SSA website, or phone system and actually get an appointment?  The website constantly just refers me to do it online, and the phone system is also horrendous.  I feel for those that are not on the internet.

 

 

[JeanneAdil 7,472]

no apology needed

It's not just SSA,  its every office you contact

DR office says "if its an emergency, call 911"  if i have an emergency i will go to emergency room or call 911 for an ambulance

and then messages go on to say "you can contact us online and give a web address

 

This is every office in my contacts from insurances to drs to cell service , etc

this is very poor customer service and is frustrating 

 

At my SS office i walked in and signed into a machine as someone had stolen my number and was going to have my pay sent to a different bank (part of the purge in the northeast scandal where SSA was hacked and thousands of numbers had issuesm)   If I had not been able to see someone that day,  i would have started a riot and probably been taken out / but this was a few years ago and i am sorry SSA has changed and made this difficult for all of us

[yuna628 9,979]

Thankfully back in 2023 scheduling it online wasn't too hard, and the fact that they made you do it was even more dumb, because when we showed up it was an empty building with one employee at the time. Unfortunately, the changes put into place since the new administration has made things harder and has been the subject of much complaint... and well it's an intentional feature not a bug. 😉 Depending on what you need the appointment for is going to depend on if you can get past the prompts to schedule an appointment to begin with. But it is best to go through the 'make an appointment' process, which will have you try your best to answer questions to the AI to see if you are indeed allowed to make an appointment (probably not, who knows?!).

 

The best way to answer this is... they say you can make an appointment, but the truth is they don't really want you to make an appointment. It's very much like UK systems now. 🙃

Edited 2 hours ago by yuna628

[OldUser 11,244]

2 hours ago, Dashinka said:

A little venting here, so apologies.  The last time I worked with the SSA, we could walk in, but now apparently an appointment must be scheduled.  How does one navigate the SSA website, or phone system and actually get an appointment?  The website constantly just refers me to do it online, and the phone system is also horrendous.  I feel for those that are not on the internet.

 

 

One gotcha is SSA office locator does not always show direct office phone number, and instead shows national number for SSA which is not helpful at all. It took me a physical visit to office, where they rejected to see me and wrote real phone # on paper so I could call and schedule appointment. It was a pain

Edited 1 hour ago by OldUser

[TBoneTX 49,172]

13 minutes ago, OldUser said:

SSA office locator does not always show direct office phone number, and instead shows national number for SSA which is not helpful at all

I had the same issue.  I asked ChatGPT to provide the phone number and physical address of the SSA office nearest to me.  It was very easy to get through, and the SSA people were surprisingly responsive.

[OldUser 11,244]

32 minutes ago, TBoneTX said:

I had the same issue.  I asked ChatGPT to provide the phone number and physical address of the SSA office nearest to me.  It was very easy to get through, and the SSA people were surprisingly responsive.

Worth a try, thank you!