Contacting Va Personnel At Any Level

[purple]

Greetings fellow vets...

Most of you may already know this, but I find the best way to contact any VA person at any level is via e-mail. All of their e-mail addresses are the same. Firstname.Lastname@va.gov If the person you are corresponding with has a common name you might want to double check.

I wanted to re-inforce this topic because this came in very handy for me this past week. Long story short I was able to prove to a VA official in Washington (head of women's veterans affairs) that the women's veterans coordinator at the Dayton VAMC had lied to me on more than one occassion about an important topic--all because I had the e-mail chain.

I've even e-mailed my doc's. To have proof of conversations in writing is, well.....priceless.

When any of them use the excuse that they don't have time, or the system isn't "secure" to use e-mail, I bring up the fact that the head of the entire women's veterans program in Washington DC feels free to e-mail me and if it's good enough for her.....well....

Just a thought.......hope it helps.

[vaf]

Excellent suggestion, purple. In fact, I'd like to add that if you bring an appeal to the Court of Veterans Appeals, the Court will look for attempts the veteran has made to communicate the problem at hand to the VA (be that the VARO, the Appeals Management Center, or the Board of Veterans Appeals). In the writ of mandamus request we've got pending, I was able to show where we e-mailed the AMC and the VA Office of the General Counsel, attempting to resolve a remand that was remanded four times between 2001 and 2008 without a decision, on an appeal that was first filed in 1994. We had receipts for when the e-mail was opened (which is interpreted to equal when it was read). We never received a reply from either person, so this documents our attempts to solve the problem ourselves at an informal level before filing a writ request. Verbal conversations won't do anymore, because the veteran has no basis of proof that they took place. So purple's got an excellent point, but I would add that it's very important you set your e-mail options to ask for a notification that the e-mail has been opened, and hold on to that receipt just in case.

[Ron II]

Greetings fellow vets...

Most of you may already know this, but I find the best way to contact any VA person at any level is via e-mail. All of their e-mail addresses are the same. Firstname.Lastname@va.gov If the person you are corresponding with has a common name you might want to double check.

I wanted to re-inforce this topic because this came in very handy for me this past week. Long story short I was able to prove to a VA official in Washington (head of women's veterans affairs) that the women's veterans coordinator at the Dayton VAMC had lied to me on more than one occassion about an important topic--all because I had the e-mail chain.

I've even e-mailed my doc's. To have proof of conversations in writing is, well.....priceless.

When any of them use the excuse that they don't have time, or the system isn't "secure" to use e-mail, I bring up the fact that the head of the entire women's veterans program in Washington DC feels free to e-mail me and if it's good enough for her.....well....

Just a thought.......hope it helps.

Very good information! Thank you...

Ron

[Pete53]

I asked my new shrink if I could email him and he said no.

[Chuck75]

Unfortunately, without a reply to an email, often all the sender has is a receipt from the recipient's mail server showing that it got the email. The actual recipient may read, not read, or delete without reading, and the sender will be none the wiser.

Excellent suggestion, purple. In fact, I'd like to add that if you bring an appeal to the Court of Veterans Appeals, the Court will look for attempts the veteran has made to communicate the problem at hand to the VA (be that the VARO, the Appeals Management Center, or the Board of Veterans Appeals). In the writ of mandamus request we've got pending, I was able to show where we e-mailed the AMC and the VA Office of the General Counsel, attempting to resolve a remand that was remanded four times between 2001 and 2008 without a decision, on an appeal that was first filed in 1994. We had receipts for when the e-mail was opened (which is interpreted to equal when it was read). We never received a reply from either person, so this documents our attempts to solve the problem ourselves at an informal level before filing a writ request. Verbal conversations won't do anymore, because the veteran has no basis of proof that they took place. So purple's got an excellent point, but I would add that it's very important you set your e-mail options to ask for a notification that the e-mail has been opened, and hold on to that receipt just in case.

[vaf]

That's true, Chuck, but if you read my post closely, I'm saying that the veteran must prove that he/she has practiced due diligence, and made attempts to communicate with the VA before escalating it to the level that we did, a request for a writ of mandamus from the Court. I never said that we actually expected a reply back, in fact, that would have been a wonderful shock. As usual, the VA sunk to our low expectations, however, we anticipated that we would be snubbed, and in fact, we were. But, we were able to whip out the e-mails we sent, the read receipts, along with the certified mail and green card receipts, and inadequate IRIS responses from the VARO (that always referenced someone from there planning to get in touch with us but never did) when we finally filed the writ request.

Just saying that you called or spoke with someone doesn't rise to the level of bona fide evidence. They want tangible proof.

For myself, I don't care if somebody's pet monkey opened the e-mail, all I care about is being able to prove it was sent and when it was received and opened.

[purple]

Pete-

My new tdoc said the same thing, but I'm not giving up and I rarely take "no" for an answer from anyone within the VA!!! My former tdoc and RN person didn't have any problem with me e-mailing them at all. So don't give up.

And as far as read receipts....sometimes they don't work on .gov addresses. I just figure since this technology is here, it should be used.