The live chat in UI Online through the Help button is another way to get questions answered without calling — it runs Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. I've found it useful for straightforward questions about claim status. For anything more complex about adjudication or pending weeks, an actual phone conversation with an agent tends to be more useful. That's part of why I bothered with Claimyr for my own hold situation — written chat didn't feel like enough when six weeks were frozen.

Updating everyone — my coworker got her DE 4800 in the mail and her interview is scheduled. She finally registered in CalJOBS too, right under the wire on her 21-day window. She's nervous about the interview but at least now she knows what it is and what to expect. I'll report back after she hears something from EDD. Really appreciate all the detail in this thread — answered a lot of questions I didn't even know I had.

My former employer disputed my claim, which I didn't know was possible until I got EDD mail about it. I'm still getting the weekly benefit amount from my DE 429Z for now because I'm certifying. But someone in my life told me the dispute automatically freezes your payments — that's not what's actually happening on my end, so I think they had it wrong.

Last question on the wage calculation side — if someone gets a raise in the last few months before being laid off, does that higher salary affect the weekly benefit amount at all? Or does it fall in that excluded recent quarter?

Something worth mentioning for anyone who worked a physical job like warehouse: if you got hurt on the job or have any workers' comp history from that employer, that's a separate system from unemployment but EDD does want to know about any workers' comp payments when you certify. Report it and EDD handles how it interacts with your UI claim. Don't leave that out thinking it won't come up.

Termination claims sit in a different pile than straightforward layoffs at EDD, which just means they take a bit longer because there's an eligibility decision being made. The timeline people see in this thread — pending for a few weeks, interview, then payment updating — is pretty standard for a termination. It's not a sign anything is wrong with your claim, it's just how the process works when there's a question about why you left.

My layoff came with a severance package and I was totally lost about whether that money counted as wages in one of my base period quarters or bumped my weekly amount. I ended up getting to an EDD agent through Claimyr after three failed attempts to get through on my own - kept getting into the phone tree and hitting a dead end. The agent told me my severance was separate from the base period wage calculation and that I should still report it when certifying as the certification form asks. She also confirmed which quarters EDD had on record for my claim and the numbers matched my W-2, so at least that part was right.

Reading back through all of this I think the main thing that helped me finally understand the quarters question was realizing there are two separate things people mean when they say 'quarters for unemployment' - there's the question of WHICH quarters get looked at (the base period window), and then there's HOW your highest quarter determines the weekly amount. People mix those two questions together and get confused. OP's question about the overtime quarter not showing up is a base period window question. The math of how earnings become a weekly check is a separate step after that.

The EDD phone situation is rough for everyone going through fact-finding who has follow-up questions between getting the letter and the actual interview. Used Claimyr to reach an agent when my own claim had an issue - the pending weeks on my account weren't matching what I expected based on my certifications. Agent looked it up and found two weeks weren't showing correctly due to a CalJOBS registration flag. Got that sorted out before my interview so it wasn't a separate problem on top of everything else.

Last thing on the interview prep - EDD might ask about your availability for work going forward. This is part of showing you're eligible not just based on your past job but ongoing. Answer that you're available and actively looking for work, because that's a weekly requirement for collecting UI regardless of what the fact-finding is about. If you're physically able to work and available, say so clearly.