Idaho opens call center to speed jobless payments. Some callers get disconnected
A new call center was supposed to help jobless Idahoans get their unemployment compensation faster. But in its first two days, many callers received the same old response: none.
The call center with 30 people, announced Friday by the Idaho Department of Labor, began taking calls Monday. “The goal is for claimants to eventually experience shorter hold times,” the department said in a news release.
But some callers to the new number, (833) 410-1009, got this message Monday and Tuesday: “Due to high call volume, we are unable to take your call at this time. Please call back during normal business hours.” Then the call was disconnected.
For two months, the state has struggled to deliver federal coronavirus-relief unemployment payments to tens of thousands of Idahoans. The problems were brought up several times Tuesday in a call-in session AARP Idaho held with Gov. Brad Little and the Labor Department director, Jani Revier.
Some people, anxious for money as bills pile up, have called dozens, even hundreds, of times to ask what is holding up their payments and when they will arrive. Some callers have never gotten through.
A self-employed woman from Sweet asked Little and Revier if the state could at least let callers leave their numbers so that state workers could call them back when ready. She said she had called 70 to 80 times seeking help, only to be hung up on by the automated system that cuts off people waiting on hold just before they reach the one-hour mark. (That was a different system, with a different phone number, than the new call center uses.)
“I’ve been spending days and days on the phone and still not getting calls,” she said.
Little deferred detailed questions about the call problems to Revier, who told the woman that the department is not set up to do even that much.
“Right now there are two many calls to do that,” she said.
Many of the payment delays affect self-employed people who are ineligible for the state’s regular unemployment compensation program, which is financed by employers. They became eligible for special federal payments under a provision of Congress’ $2.2 trillion relief law passed in late March.
But the Labor Department lacked the systems and personnel needed to work through questions their applications raised about potential eligibility.
Revier said the call center has capped the number of people who are put on hold “to prevent people from sitting on hold all day long.”
“Many people are actually getting through,” she said.
She said the department expects to be able to take callers’ numbers and return their calls eventually.
“One benefit of the call center is we will have that capacity in the future,” she said.
This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 4:29 PM.
