Received a 5103 notice today

[wingnut73]

I receive a 5103 notice today giving me 30 days to produce all evidence to support my claim for an increase. It says they have received NO Evidence to support my claim. This is Bull**** ! I went to my C&P in July with everything indexed and ready to submit. The C&P office copied it all and I assume it was sent to the RO. 

I really believe this is in retaliation   for me contacting my congressman and allison Hickey to get my C&P rescheduled.

I would like to slow this down to give me time to sort this out and get a lawyer.

[Guest]

Sorry that you are going through this.  You have a few choices but you only have 30 days to resubmit your evidence.

You can certified receipt from the post office with green card cost maybe about $5-$10, or you can send it priority mail which will cost about $13-$20 and track it with signature or you can take your evidence to your congress critters office and have them send it for free on their cost.  Either way make sure it goes to the right address and make sure you get a copy of where it goes.  Sometimes the congress critters office will fax it and sometimes they will mail it off.

Best wishes

[wingnut73]

I just thought of a possible stratagy.

They give you 2 options to respond to the 5103 notice

#1 request that they decide the claim on the existing evidence

#2 They give you 30 days to produce more evidence and then they make a decision.

IF I take option #1, they then deny the increase and I then appeal.

Is this a good approach?

[Buck52]

Send in all copies of your evidence that they said they didn't have?

Go with # 2

  Do this tomorrow or asap...underline or better yet  high-light in neon color all the important information so they will be sure to read it...like pete 992 mention get  return receipt from the post office  (green card)  ...you can always Appeal!!!

 

if you go with no.1.....> they will deny. .....> you can always appeal that too but you want them to adjudicate your claim to your favor.

remember evidence wins...when they actually read it.

 

jmo

............Buck

Edited August 25, 2015 by Buck52

[wingnut73]

Buck The problem is that they say they have No evidence. They surely have the evidence from my case that I was SC in. 

[Carl the Engineer]

Not saying this is a 5103, but,

In all my claims they (VA) always sends me a letter with forms attached telling me to send in my evidence, even though I have allready done so.  I just ignore it as I believe this is just a mailer that it generated by the claim.  This is to include my FDC claims.  Always get the letter, always ignore it.

Works for me, 

Hamslice

[bluevet]

I receive a 5103 notice today giving me 30 days to produce all evidence to support my claim for an increase. It says they have received NO Evidence to support my claim. This is Bull**** ! I went to my C&P in July with everything indexed and ready to submit. The C&P office copied it all and I assume it was sent to the RO. 

I really believe this is in retaliation   for me contacting my congressman and allison Hickey to get my C&P rescheduled.

I would like to slow this down to give me time to sort this out and get a lawye

Wingnut, I know you're frustrated, but this is an easy fix. The C&P examiner normally only sends the VA a filled out DBQ and a Medical (Nexus) Opinion. I don't think this is retaliation, I think it's just a misunderstanding . It's an easy fix. Get the evidence into the VA as quickly as possible. mail it into the new evidence intake center for your region. Do not send it directly to the R.O. address as this will cause a delay in the evidence getting into your file. You can also fax it in before you mail it. Faxing get's into your file very quickly, but you still want to mail it so that you have a receipt. When faxing, put your SSN on top of each page. If it's too many pages to fax, you can fax in a VBA-21-4138 stating that you have mailed your evidence and a copy of your mailing receipt.

Waiting for them to deny so that you can appeal is not a good approach. You want to take full advantage of each opportunity to get your claim approved. It would be a terribly wasted opportunity to let that deadline pass. Good Luck

Edited August 26, 2015 by bluevet