Social Security payment stuck in processing at Payment Center for 3+ weeks - normal wait time?

my husband waited 6 weeks for payment center to finish processing his retroactive benefits last year... just sayin it can take forever with them. no rhyme or reason to how long

The Payment Center processing time varies quite a bit, especially for manually processed claims involving pension offsets like yours (WEP/GPO calculations). From my experience working with clients, 3-6 weeks is fairly standard. Your case is complicated by having that state government pension that triggers manual review. What I suggest is checking if your state pension administrator has sent the necessary verification to SSA - sometimes that's the holdup. Also, your local field office can actually do a "case status" inquiry to the Payment Center, which sometimes speeds things up. I'd recommend calling the field office that helped you initially and asking specifically for that case status inquiry.

THEY ARE TERRIBLE!!!! I waited NINE WEEKS for payment center to process my widows benefits last year!!! Called EVERY DAY and nobody could tell me anything. Just "it's at the payment center" over and over. The whole system is broken and they don't care about us at all.

I had almost the exact situation with WEP (Windfall Elimination Provision) calculation since I had federal employment. What worked for me was using Claimyr to get through to a live person at SSA. I was getting nowhere trying to call directly - either disconnected or 3+ hour wait times. With Claimyr (claimyr.com), they got me through to an agent in about 20 minutes. The agent was able to send a priority message to the payment center about my case. Got my payment scheduled 5 days later! They have a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/Z-BRbJw3puU

Payment Center timing really depends on several factors. With a pension offset calculation (either WEP or GPO depending on your specific situation), processing takes longer because they need to calculate exactly how much your Social Security benefit should be reduced based on your government pension. Three weeks is still within normal processing time. If you hit the 4-5 week mark, I'd suggest having your local office submit what's called a "PC status inquiry" or a "critical case flag" if you're facing financial hardship. The online account typically doesn't show much detail during this particular stage, so don't worry too much about the lack of status updates there.

lol welcome to social security hell! my claim was "at the payment center" for 2 months and when i finally got through to someone they said there was no record of it ever being sent there! had to start all over. make sure u keep calling

I went through something similar with my retirement benefits last year. My claim got stuck in the payment center for about 5 weeks because of WEP calculations from my teaching pension. What eventually worked for me was contacting my Congressional Representative's office. They have caseworkers who handle Social Security issues and can often get information and resolution much faster than we can as individuals. I called my Rep's office, filled out a privacy release form, and they had information for me within 2 days. My payments started the following week. Just something to consider if you continue having trouble.

btw when u do finally get approved theyll backpay from ur eligibility date my husband got a pretty big lump sum when they finally processed everything

After trying the suggestions here, what was your outcome? Just curious because I have a friend about to go through the same process with a federal pension offset.