I'm so fed up with this whole process. Been laid off for 2 months, bills piling up, and I can't even get a straight answer about my claim. Anyone else feeling like they're drowning?

Congrats on finally getting through! That's such a relief after all that stress. I'm currently in week 3 of trying to reach them about my claim - seeing your post gives me hope that persistence really does pay off. Did they give you any timeline for when your benefits might start coming through? I'm trying to manage my expectations here but also need to know when I might see some financial relief. Thanks for sharing your experience!

yeah same thing happened to my cousin, employer said he quit but he was actually fired, took like 2 months to sort out but he eventually got his benefits

I've been through a similar situation and here's what I learned about NYS Department of Labor rules: employers need to prove "willful misconduct" to successfully contest your claim. Being late 3 times in 6 months with advance notice definitely doesn't meet that standard. The fact that they only gave you verbal warnings (no written documentation) actually works in your favor. NYS Department of Labor looks for patterns of deliberate policy violations, not occasional tardiness. Keep all your records showing you called ahead when late - that demonstrates good faith effort. Most contested claims like yours get approved if the employer can't provide solid written evidence of misconduct.

FYI - I got the same thing and it was actually legit. Their system had a major glitch in april that lost a bunch of verification documents. Super annoying but I had to resubmit. Just make sure you do it through the secure portal and not by replying to any email.

I'm dealing with something similar right now! Got laid off from my restaurant job in January, approved in February, been getting payments for about 10 weeks. Then last week I got an email asking me to resend everything to some random gmail address. The email looked pretty official but something felt off - why would they suddenly need verification AGAIN after already paying me for months? Plus like others said, they've never asked for email submissions before, always through the portal. I logged into my actual account and there was no message there asking for documents, which made me even more suspicious. Definitely sounds like the scam everyone's talking about. Thanks for posting this - glad to know I'm not the only one getting these sketchy emails! Going to report it to that fraud email address someone mentioned. This whole situation is so stressful when you're already dealing with being unemployed 😞

I useto work for DOL (not in NY but similar system). The reason they have brackets instead of exact hours is to make it easier to match employer reporting with employee claims. Most employers report in whole hours only. The safest approach is ALWAYS round up. You might get a few dollars less that week but you won't trigger a fraud investigation.

Just went through this same situation last month! You definitely want to round UP to the 11-16 hours bracket. I made the mistake of rounding down initially and it caused a 4-week delay in my benefits while they "investigated" the discrepancy. The rep I finally spoke to explained that any time worked beyond the exact hour should be reported in the higher bracket. It's better to potentially get slightly reduced benefits for one week than deal with the headache of having your entire claim frozen. The NY system is designed to catch these small inconsistencies, so always err on the side of caution and round up!

So I might be in the minority here but I actually got through on the regular phone line after 47 attempts over 2 days. For those still trying: press 1, then 1, wait for prompt, press 9, then 2. That sequence got me a human faster than the other options.

This is incredibly helpful - thank you for sharing your experience! I've been dealing with a similar situation where my payments stopped in December with just a generic "pending review" message. I've called probably 60+ times and sent countless messages through the portal with zero response. Reading all these comments about contacting assembly members and using services like Claimyr is giving me hope that there might actually be a way forward. Going to try reaching out to my assembly person first thing tomorrow morning with all my documentation. It's frustrating that we have to jump through these hoops just to get basic assistance, but at least now I know there are options beyond the black hole that is the regular customer service line.