Salt Lake City Ro

[mistercee32]

Hello all, has anyone have any dealings or know of anyone dealing with Salt Lake City RO? My initial claim was initiated through the waco RO when I was preparing for my retirement. I got a letter from WACO RO stating that my claim was transfered to Utah because waco was backlogged. I checked enbenifit and my claim shows that it is in the gathering of evidence phase. It has been in this phase for 3 months. I appreciate any and all information that can be provided if possible.

Thanks

[ghillbe]

I don't want to be a bear of bad news, if the salt lake is any thing like the seattle Ro mine has been in the gathering phase for almost 21 mo so find a hobby and relax it seems any thing with the va takes years not months

[oldranger821]

My call to the 1800 number was routed to Salt Lake City.. Talked to a nice lady that actually looked at my record(File on the computer) and her words were this is messed up. Has not been updated at all and according to what I said to her there was other stuff wrong too. The lady was nice. Not anything like the SHi$head that I got when I called the Claims Management folks in DC. The dude was rude!!!! Told in no uncertain terms , I was not to call there for info and to call the 1-800 number. He is a 50 something sounding male!!! Hope you don't get him when you call.

[mistercee32]

_{Well thanks guys, I appreciate the feed back. I am hoping the salt lake RO do me some justice. they told me it takes 11 month from beginning to completion. My claim was submitted back in Dec 2011, but they couldnt start on it until my retirement date, which was 1 jun 2012. Ebenifits has a compltetion date from 8 Dec 2012 to 17 Mar 2013. I'll let it play out and see what happends, until then I am just fishing and trying to find a job. Oh, I know this is a long shot, but do you think they would approve me for VR&E? Just thought I would ask}

[jvretiredvet]

Did you request a VR&E memo rating?

BTW, for us OFs (old farts), cud'ja mebbe make your font a wee bit bigger?

_{Well thanks guys, I appreciate the feed back. I am hoping the salt lake RO do me some justice. they told me it takes 11 month from beginning to completion. My claim was submitted back in Dec 2011, but they couldnt start on it until my retirement date, which was 1 jun 2012. Ebenifits has a compltetion date from 8 Dec 2012 to 17 Mar 2013. I'll let it play out and see what happends, until then I am just fishing and trying to find a job. Oh, I know this is a long shot, but do you think they would approve me for VR&E? Just thought I would ask}

[mistercee32]

Sorry jvretiredvet for the small font. No I didnt request for a VR&E memo rating. I didnt know that you could do that. How do I go about doing that? I am getting kind of bored sitting by the fishing lake all day every day

[jvretiredvet]

How do I go about doing that? Well, in the normal course of affairs, you'd have requested a memo rating for VR&E purposes. Then, when your claims file came in to the VA Regional Office, a designated rater would do a very quick review of your file and make a determination that some combination of your disabilities would be at least 20%; with that memo rating (actually, just a letter), you could go to voc rehab and proceed on. After the memo rating, your claim would proceed in the normal fashion.

However, even the memo rating would not have been done until after you separated.

If you want to do this now, you could send a letter/Form 21-4138 to the SLC VARO (if you're sure that your claims file is there); or, you can drop it off at the nearest VARO and let them find your claims file. When the request for a memo rating comes in, someone will have to find your claims file there and send it to the person(s) designated to do memo ratings. After the memo rating is done, your claims file is returned to the pile for whatever status it is in.

Or, they could just say 'screw it', the rating will be done shortly anyway- let's not complicate things by doing a memo rating.

Or, they could say 'instead of a memo rating, let's just take this claim out of the pile and do it ahead of all the others in the pile'. IMNSHO, doubtful.

There is a great deal of debate whether one should change contentions, add contentions, whatever, during a claims process, that is, whether it makes the initial claims process longer. Well, it shouldn't (inordinately) ... but it can.

Sorry jvretiredvet for the small font. No I didnt request for a VR&E memo rating. I didnt know that you could do that. How do I go about doing that? I am getting kind of bored sitting by the fishing lake all day every day