I've been waiting since June to hear from the VA about my Mom's A&A. We have gotten a couple of "please be patient" letters. When I called to try to light a fire they said I could not ask because my form 21-22A had not been processed...along with the rest of the application. I spoke with an AWESOME man in processing and he told me that I should get a form 21-0845 filled out right away. When I had it done I called him back and he told me if I faxed it within a few minutes he would personally grab if off the fax machine and input the info himself. He did and I was able to "legally" speak to him on my Mom's behalf by that afternoon. Unfortunately, in the long run he had to put in a "inquiry" to find out what was happening with the application. He said that it would take up to 5 business days for them to act on the inquiry and they would call with the results. That was 5 business days ago.........holding my breath.....
Here's the problem: the 22A is not for you, you're looking for the 0845. Submit that and you should be good to go. That being said, go through the IRIS system at iris.va.gov. This system will route your inquiry to the right office and you can talk to someone directly.
The problem with the call centers is that your calls to to Philly, but since we don't have enough responders in Philly, you might get routed to a call center that doesn't know much about pension and since the pension workers are too overwhelmed with the volume of claims they don't put notes in for the call centers. they often won't be able to help you when you call because there aren't any notes, so they put an inquiry into IRIS for you (which is something you could have done on your own). I suggest to USE IRIS as much as you can. It is your best bet for direct contact with the actual person working on your claim.
