Unemployment applicants reportedly sent in circles, unable to reach anyone for help
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — As the sole source of income for her family, Bri Conner often finds herself awake at night, worrying about how the bills will get paid since she was laid off.
“You know, three in the morning you can’t sleep from stress, and you’re still trying to jump on the website because maybe there’s less people trying to file at three in the morning, and still you get nowhere,” Conner said.
A couple pages into the process of filing for unemployment, Conner says she gets an error message. She says it sends her in a loop, back to the home page.
KRDO reached out to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. A spokesperson for the department, Cher Haavind, said the state processes and pays tens of thousands of unemployment claims each week, providing half a million Coloradans with billions of dollars in benefits.
Haavind said there are no system issues.
“The vast majority of these claimants have filed their claim themselves using our online self-service tools,” Haavind said. “However, we know that for some this is an unfamiliar process, so on ColoradoUI.gov, we’ve added how-to videos, step-by-step charts, and more to help claimants file their claims quickly and easily.”
Gus Garcia lives in Pueblo. He’s had similar issues figuring out his unemployment benefits.
Both Conner and Garcia say their biggest frustration is the inability to speak to a real person. They have tried daily to reach someone with the state government who can assist them.
“There are callback request slots added to our Virtual Agent daily,” Haavind said. “If you are unable to schedule a callback we ask that you try again as we add thousands of openings each week.”
But in most cases, the Virtual Agent tells Conner and Garcia there are no callback slots available. Garcia says, the one callback appointment he was offered was six weeks away.
It pushed Garcia to make the two-hour drive from Pueblo to Denver to speak with a state employee in-person.
“When you are struggling to pay your bills and you’re financially reliant upon the benefits that you’ve paid in to unemployment, it’s frustrating that you can’t get anybody,” Garcia said. “And if you’re waiting six to eight weeks, most people don’t have that kind of savings.”
The upcoming Christmas holiday makes the unemployment confusion particularly hard for Conner’s family.
“We have a one-year-old,” Conner said. “And it’s the holiday season. And some people will say, 'He’s too young, he won’t remember.' But we will. We will remember what should have been his first participating Christmas.”
The Colorado Department of Labor continues to recommend filing for unemployment through its website: https://cdle.colorado.gov/unemployment/new-claimant.
