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Smitty2020

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About Smitty2020

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  • Military Rank
    SFC

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  • Service Connected Disability
    90%
  • Branch of Service
    US. Army
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  1. To possibly help I'll give my experience. I filed my NOD Legacy Appeal April 2015 and docketed at board November 2017. On August 2019 1 of my appealed issues was closed and after my SOC was received my attorney filed an AMA for the issue closed on May 2020. I know a little confusing so far but follow me here. On November 20, 202o I had two virtual hearings for appeals. I had one for Legacy at 10am and had second for AMA at 11am. I was told by the Judge that her staff would combine both appeals even though different path into one decision. Hopefully this helps a little. I think you will know better when or if you are getting a hearing, Sam
  2. Thanks for all the replies. I understand where everyone is coming from I am just so tired of seeing all the AMA appeals submitted after mine and then completed before my appeal. The fact that I chose not to move from legacy to AMA was that on VA.gov stated my appeal would be completed "SOON" and I figured moving to AMA would just move me to the back of that line. Oh well, Attorneys feel that we should have a decision between July - August and backpay completed by October, unless I get a remand since all evidence in 6 years old.
  3. So my appeal is a Legacy from May of 2015 appeal placed on the Docket November 2017. Now, I had me virtual hearing on November 2020, and still waiting on a decision. My issue is about the AMA and these appeals lacking any evidence and almost all being remanded back to regional office. I go back and look at the cases once they are uploaded for us to see. There is literally hundreds of AMA appeals completed with docket dates of 2019-2021 for every one Legacy appeal from 2018 and older. When a person goes through these cases you will see that more than half of these AMA appeals are remanded due to lack of evidence. I still, to this day, have over 40K appeals ahead of mine. I have been waiting for now over 6 years for it to be completed and I wonder how many of these 40K will be remanded due to lack of evidence? I may wait an entire another year or more to get my decision completed due to these "BS" AMA appeals. I mean if you are going to file an appeal to the VBA get your crap straight its not just your appeal that is going to be remanded for more years but your screwing over other veterans. I'm not trying to be a hater here but this AMA didn't do anything but screw all of us over. My appeal is based on significant issue with the St. Louis regional office. I have been service connected with Systematic Scleroderma and the St. Louis RO denied all the secondary conditions with this disease. If anyone knows about scleroderma they know that it is called CREST and CREST is called scleroderma. I have been medically diagnosed with all the CREST issues, but all the ST. Louis office wants to rate me on is my Lung condition from scleroderma. This is all besides the point that I have now waited over 6 years for secondary conditions because my appeal cant get through the backlog of appeals that don't have evidence attached to them.
  4. I had mine back in November of 2020, so don't expect anything quick after the virtual hearing, because I am still waiting on the appeal to go back for the judge to decide. For your answer though my judge was very nice and understood my situation completely and I felt like things are in my favor. We did have to submit one Nexus letter and we did that within a week, but still had to wait the entire 90days, plus still waiting.
  5. I am in the exact same boat as you. My appeal was issued in May 2015, certified to board Nov 2017, received video conference with judge Nov 2020, the 90 day evidence gathering was over in Feb 2021, and here I stand with no clue. Now on VA.gov it states that my appeal is still waiting to be sent to a judge and I have almost 48K appeals ahead of me. So keep me posted when you get your decision that might help me some idea. Sam
  6. https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/board-of-veterans-appeals-decisions If a person really wanted to see what was going on with the AMA and Legacy just go and read through some of the decisions. There are at least 5 times more remands than there are grants. I know there are a lot of claims that are fishy, but I agree with several of you that they are cleaning up their numbers by just rushing through and remanding appeals to show their backlog drop. It just adds to the wait time of the veteran and most of us agree they could careless about our wait time. We have all been trained to "hurry up and wait" and "embrace the suck".
  7. Well after writing this I just got the email that my Virtual Hearing is this Nov 20th so exactly three years since docket. I'll keep you all posted as I go forward, but at least I'm on the down hill side of all this. Might be another year to I get the final results but hey at least I made the hearing schedule. Thanks, Sam
  8. This might help a little to give you some sort of time frame. My docket date is Nov2017 and I have my virtual hearing this Nov on the 20th. That puts me at exactly three year from docket date to hearing, now how long after hearing "who the hell knows". I would just go with exactly three years from your docket date and cross fingers. On VA.gov it still shows 60,195 appeals ahead of me and that they are working on AUG2017 docket, so the VA.gov is bullcrap to try and go off of. Hope it gives some insight.
  9. On VA.gov they removed the "decision soon" box since I asked them what soon meant to the VBA since that statement was on my appeal status from FEB2019 until SEP2020. Now the VA.gov shows as of today 10/28/20 60,498 appeals ahead of me. On the other hand they also state that they are reviewing appeals from AUG2017. My main issue here is I thought the VBA was first come first serve, so how can you be reviewing appeals older before you complete appeals before it. On the other hand if they are working on AUG2017 how is that first come first serve, shouldn't that appeal have been completed years ago if they go by first come first serve? Just extremely frustrated that nothing the VBA post on VA.gov or tell the govt match up to what they are actually doing. I figure I will get my virtual hearing sometime between now and an astronaut reaches Mars. Any advise or experience from others would be helpful.
  10. OK everyone follow me on this please, With the new law that Veterans can have "class action lawsuits against the VBA" I am looking for several Veterans that still have a legacy appeal that is over 18 months old. 1. My legacy appeal to the board was certified to the board on NOV 2017. 2. February 2019 I was informed that my appeal would be completed "SOON". 3. March 2019, refused to move into the AMA system since my appeal was to be competed "soon". 4. DATA collection from the VBA docket completion shows over 1000 AMA appeals completed to 1 Legacy appeal. 5. DATA/Numbers of reported appeals completed on all data points from the VBA do not match or even come close to adding up. 6. Through specific research most legacy appeals that have been completed are "dismissed" due to death of Veteran. 7. Legacy appeals once certified to board are averaging 36-60 months for completion, where AMA are 60-120 months from completion. What I am looking for is Veterans that are still in the Legacy appeal system? Is your appeal based on terminal issues? Is your appeal fully developed? Were you told roughly during the implementation of the AMA system that your appeal would be completed "SOON"? Is your appeal over 18 months from being certified to the board? I have a couple law firms that are interested in what is going on with us Veterans left in the Legacy system. I am in full belief that many of us were lied to about our appeals being completed "SOON" so that we would not move into the AMA system to allow them to move through the appeals faster and stay within the time frame they gave Congress. Also, would like to know ow many Veterans in the Legacy system could possibly die before their appeal is completed because by leaving certain appeals in the legacy system guarantees no benefits past down to dependents after death.
  11. A little over a year that is awesome, did you request any type of hearing or just for a VLJ to review your appeal?
  12. I have a date of November 2017 and I am still not being seen this FY20. I also requested for a video hearing with a law judge. My only opinion is to make sure they know you want a virtual hearing and keep faxing them the request until someone calls you and tells you they received it and put down you requested a virtual hearing. I will tell you this and it isn't great news or even nice but I guarantee they are completing 1000 RAMP appeals to every 1 legacy appeal. My appeal should have been completed in FY19 but I'll be lucky to have a virtual hearing in FY21.
  13. Decision soon, Your appeal will soon receive a Board decision. Submitting new evidence at this time could delay review of your appeal. If you’ve moved recently, please make sure that VA has your up-to-date mailing address. So the reason I posted the Decision soon comment off of VA.gov is that this comment is no 20 months old and going on my appeal status. Now, I am not sure what most of you think "soon" means but I believe it means completing something in a timely and responsible manner. My appeal goes back to May 2015 and at the board docket November 2017. December 2018 VA.gov showed that I was awaiting a decision soon, now 20 months later it is still going to be decided soon. The reason I chose not to go into the AMA route is that VA.gov stated that my appeal is going to be decided "soon" so I didn't want to risk moving back. Twenty months and still no hearing scheduled. I got a hold of my Fed Representative after two IRIS and several phone calls that only led to nobody even knowing where my appeal is. Literally 1st IRIS stated it was back at the RO awaiting scheduling, and the 2nd IRIS stated that my appeal was still awaiting to be assigned to a judge. Anyway, the info my Rep got was the generic info that all hearings are canceled and only virtual hearings are being scheduled and that i needed to request a virtual hearing. Three times since January 1st I had faxed in the form to request a virtual hearing never hearing a thing back that they got them. I explained to my Rep this and two days later I received a phone call telling me that the board received my form(s). After they blamed me for not requesting a virtual hearing. This is were the interesting piece comes into play, as I was listening to the woman tell me about how the virtual hearings work and that I am not on her docket for the remainder of FY20 but likely on FY21 she kept bringing up FY19. When I questioned her about why she kept stating FY19 her stumbled and stated that FY19 is where she sees that my appeal was removed from the actual docket line up and them replaced back into the line up. So my thinking is that my appeal was likely moving forward and since I declined the AMA it went back of the pile, and they never changed the decision soon in VA.gov. Another thing is if you look over the VBA docket you will see that there is very few appeals with a docket date later that FY20 that have been completed in a long time. So if you are a legacy appeal like me, just know they are completing probably a thousand or more AMA appeals to one legacy appeal. This is how they are showing congress they are completing appeals at a record amount of time. What they are failing to tell congress is that due to their record breaking closure many of us left in the legacy status are being shafted significantly. One last thing, my appeal should of never been a denied claim to start with since it was for secondary conditions that cannot be denied not to be part of my issue. I have systematic scleroderma and my appeal is over St. Louis RO denying my secondary condition "CREST". The acronym "CREST" refers to the five main features: calcinosis, Raynaud's phenomenon, esophageal dysmotility, sclerodactyly, and telangiectasia. These issues are directly related to scleroderma, and I have all but sclerodactyly which I didn't even claim. The point is that all the evidence from civilian docotrs, VA doctors and even C and P exam showed this but the refused all areas of CREST and now its been going on six years for a judge. That's my rant and if there is anyone out their with a legacy appeal is going through the same nonsense let me know.
  14. Need some questions answered. I have a legacy appeal that has been at the board awaiting a hearing since NOV2017. Since FEB2019 I have been keeping track of the movement on VA.gov and it has only moved 40K as of today 30JUN2020. Last week I sent an IRIS to get some updated info and was told they forwarded the request to the regional office. Question 1. why forward a question about an appeal in DC to regional office, especially since I have not even had my video hearing yet? Question 2. Since last week my appeal has not moved past the 73,397 mark, when usually it moves a few to hundreds each day? Yes, after almost three years there is supposedly still 73, 397 appeals ahead of mine, even though the VA is reporting record amount of appeals being completed in a year and supposedly going to have all legacy appeals completed by FY21. Anyone have any similar issues with their appeal or any thoughts on why my appeal is showing not moving anymore? Thanks, Sam
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