Millions of Social Security recipients get ‘not receiving payments’ message
An internal memo sent to the Social Security Administration told staffers that millions of beneficiaries are receiving error messages claiming they’re “not receiving payments.”
According to the SSA staff email, obtained by The Washington Post, the error message was sent to a large part of the 7.4 million people enrolled in the Supplemental Security Income — a monthly benefit that benefits adults and children in poverty.
Post reporters said some people who received the error message were initially panicked. However, their monthly were still deposited in their bank accounts.
This is just one issue facing the Social Security website. Over the past few weeks, there’s been widespread reports of nearly half-hour outages, login fields with missing information and repeated crashes.
The administration acknowledged the crashes on the SSA’s official X account.
“The webservice for registrations & authentications of all mySSA traffic hit performance degradations that led to inaccurate data being given to customers using mySSA & shut down access to mySSA,” the post read.
The administration said it’s working to fix the errors.
Anyone dealing with issues to their Social Security benefits can call the SSA’s support hotline at 1-800-772-1213.
On Tuesday, a group of Democratic senators penned a letter to Acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek demanding answers as to why some of their constituents are receiving disruptions to their Social Security benefits.
The senators said their constituents have sent them reports of Social Security accounts displaying incorrect error messages that payments have not been received. The senators said payment history and data have also disappeared for many.
These errors reportedly started to occur after the Department of Government of Efficiency (DOGE) began making adjustments to the SSA in March.
Since DOGE’s intervention, millions of deceased individuals were removed from Social Security records. DOGE also listed 47 Social Security offices that would close, but a Social Security statement later said they would not be closing.
Most recently, overpayment withholding was increased from 10% to 100% for some beneficiaries.