Delivering Forms to Social Security? Read This!

Because Social Security manages Medicare enrollment, we work with offices on a daily basis. Historically, it has been straightforward to hand-deliver forms, such as Special Enrollment forms for Medicare Part B, to your local Social Security office. This has been our preferred method because hand-delivered forms have been much less likely to be misplaced.

We are in a more challenging era now with respect to delivering forms because a banner on the Social Security website reads:

If you need to visit an office, schedule an appointment first. Here’s how.

Here are our tips:

• Understand Enrollment deadlines and begin the process early. 
• If you must deliver forms, try to obtain the number of your local office on ssa.gov and call to see if an appointment is required or whether you can walk in forms without an appointment, or fax the forms. Remember, Social Security wants you to use your local office, and they generally will not deal with anyone other than you.
• However, if the ssa.gov website doesn’t display a local office number or a local fax for your local office, you have the option of calling the national number, 800 772-1213, but hold times can be excessive. I have had messages that said wait times are in excess of 120 minutes and I have had the system terminate my call indicating to call back at less busy times (even when I’ve called at their defined less busy times – later in the week, later in the day, and later in the month). Know that a call back can be hours later.
• Worst case, if you have difficulty getting through or your calls are terminated, you may have to visit your local office to see if you can deliver the forms or make a future appointment to deliver the forms. Some offices are going to be easier to deal with than others.

The current administration aims to shrink the number of federal employees, including Social Security employees. If you need to deliver forms to Social Security, start the process early.