Well i have just received my Award notice for my UK pension and every thing is in order. They noted my period of US working, so just need to wait for the US to respond. The UK Award letter does not indicate that social security will be informed of my UK pension application, so not expecting any response.

Since my application to begin receiving SS has been in limbo for many weeks (Nov 12) at step 2 waiting on an agent in Baltimore I girded my loins at 4pm my time (11am EST) and using my Skype account called the number for the Baltimore office which I expect is a general number. I was on hold for 3 hours and 16 minutes before a most helpful lady answered and after 10 minutes talking with her I believe she is going to get the application out of the bottom of the bucket it appears to be in. She said she could see no reason at all why it hadn’t been processed as they had all the information they need. She checked that all my details are correct, address in England, my UK mobile phone number etc. She said she is going to send a message to get this rolling and I should expect a benefit verification letter within 20 days or a request for more information.



Before hanging up, I made sure to tell her that I know she and her colleagues are working hard in difficult circumstances, that they are doing a great job and that I really appreciate all of their efforts. I reckon my 3+ hours on hold is nothing compared to what they are going through right now.

My wife's Medicare application is in its 5th month of processing. She has had to call four times. There is only one central 800 number and I don't think you can call a specific office unless they give you it directly for some reason. The wait time is usually 3 hours, but if you have a US number they offer a callback, so you can at least get on with your day while waiting. Unfortunately, the quality of the agents on the other end of the phone varies. They are always polite, but she has had incomplete or flat out wrong advice from some (one simply did not know the SSA rules for spouse claiming Medicare from other spouse's record). Anyhow, the agent she spoke to last week was great and she figured out where the processing was stuck and got things moving again. That agent explained the long hold and processing times were caused by staffing issues related to restrictions on hiring the past few years because of being funded on 'Continuing Resolutions' instead of congress passing a proper budget. And now morale is in the toilet and there are more layoffs because of meddling by that power-hungry ahole Musk. All this at a time of peak baby boomer retirements. It makes absolutely no effing sense. Mine and my wife's SS claims are going in soon. And oh, there's a potential government shutdown looming for March 14th. Anticipate more delays.....
BTW - if the SSA does not have documented proof of your citizenship, they require you to produce your papers in person at the local office. I assume for you that will be the US embassy.

To answer your last question first, SSA do have our documented citizenship on record. Normally we would have had to bring the documents in person but because of Covid (which is when we applied for Medicare) they changed the rules and allowed us to send in passport and Naturalization Certificates where they were processed and recorded by the FBU in the London Embassy.

When my wife applied for her SS in 2021 we also had to make a phone call to Baltimore at the same stage to get it moving. Only a 1 hour wait on the phone back then. In both cases the agents we spoke to were very personable and professional. It took another 3 months after the phone call for my wife to start getting hers, and I’ll be happy if it’s that “fast” now. My initial application was done on September 1st.

The looming government shutdown is also another issue as you mention.

Best of luck with your own dealings with SSA.

Have a retired friend whose work career involved both earnings from SS covered employment and public school teaching outside of SS. His SS benefits had been reduced by WEP. Just this week he received a largish payment for his 2024 retroactive elimination of his WEP reduction.

my wife just told me that she has a secure message waiting for her from SSA. We’ll read it tomorrow but are hopeful that it will be her recalculation of benefits after elimination of the WEP that was applied.

I got the same, and was hopeful it was a re-calculation but no luck.

It was indeed a correction to her benefits and the much higher payments with WEP removed will commence with the April payment.

WHOOP WHOOP

That 3hr 25 minute phone call I had with SSA on Monday has produced a fantastic result in 4 days. I just checked on line and my application to start benefits has been approved and the first payment will arrive early April (My 70th birthday was in February). I also checked my profile and it looks like they have my UK bank details set up okay.

No mention of WEP.

Surprisingly I got a large payment from SS into my bank with no notification, my SS account shows it as a "one time payment" so I assume it's the back dated WEP refund.
No mention of my monthly payment increasing yet.

Same.
I was curious as to why no change in monthly payment as well. I guess it's wait and see in April?

Do you guys have online SSA accounts that you can look at? On both mine and my wife’s accounts the new monthly payment showed up ahead of time stating how much and when they would start, but nothing about the amount of back payments for my wife. (Mine is a new claim, my wife has been receding benefits for a few years).

Yesterday my wife received a nice lump sum in her UK bank account which will be the lump sum but we still don’t know exactly how much it was in USD, just estimate it from the exchange rate.

About two weeks ago I received an email from SSA stating that I would get two letters providing information on (1) the amount and payment of the arrears and the (2) new rate going forward. It also stated that I may well receive the arrears in my bank before I get the letters. It looks like we will all get letters and the payments but the order in which they come is uncertain!

Meanwhile when I looked at my on-line account yesterday it gave my new monthly rate in the Letter of Verification section, not in the Messages section where I would have expected to find it.

Yeah, no messages but confirmed by looking at the letter of verification.

Yes, I’m going to wait till the end of march before I worry that they forgot about me. I think, in that original email that we all got a few weeks ago, that laid out the process and the timeline, it did say that people would be processed in rolling batches through March - there must be millions of of people affected, not just folks who worked in foreign countries, but a lot of state workers too.