As anyone who has been obliged to call Social Security knows, the wait time has been prohibitively long. In the last year of the Biden administration the average wait was 60 minutes, which was bad enough, but in 2025 under the present regime that had increased to a wholly unacceptable 86 minutes.
In order to address the wait and to pad the figures, Social Security took to re-routing calls to local offices to other locations and the 1-800 number. The upshot of the change saw a drop in wait times but primarily caused more frustration to callers who were dealing with representatives who were unable to help them. Anecdotal evidence provided by staff at Nash Disability Law spoke of having a call to a Chicago field office being answered by someone in Wisconsin whose only support was to inform the caller that they would ask Chicago to call them back. Needless to say, they report that they never received that call.
The good news is that Social Security has been persuaded to change its ways and has now made the assurance that any call to a field office will be answered by a representative at that location. It remains to be seen if they will stay true to the promise, but the hope remains.