appealing

[waltbarb]

start 8/12/2012,Awaiting Place on the Docket for 2 years now

[broncovet]

Unfortunately, that is about "par for the course", but I definately share your frustration.  

I had a 2009 VARO decision, which the appeal reached the board in 2012, and to get it done "THAT QUICKLY" (3 years), I had to stir up the pot by emailing Robert McDonald and stuff like that.  

Its worse now, if you read the VA chairmans report.  https://www.bva.va.gov/Chairman_Annual_Rpts.asp

Like yourself, I thought 2 or 3 years was plenty of time.  NOPE.  It takes 5 years now.  Some politicians thought they would "help" the backlog by putting pressue on VA, and the net result is they denied most of the pending claims, and now many of those are in an appeal backlog, not a claim backlog.  But, some people got to boast, "I shortened the claim backlog from a million claims down to 40,000."  They forget to mention there is now hundreds of thousands of these in appeals...and many Vets got their bad decision and just gave up.  

As the chairmans report shows, much of the appeals backlog is NOT the fault of the BVA.  Your VARO "sits" on your appeal for a couple years before they bother to "certify" it and mail it to the Board.  Sure this should take a week or so, but the VARO's want to send a message that we should not appeal, so they sit on it for 2 years.  Next, your friendly VSO will "help" too.  He has to prepare a "brief" to the Board, so, expect your VSO to sit on it for a few more months to a year.  

My VSO lied to me, when I checked on my appeal and ebenefits stated it was "with VSO".  So I called the VSO and asked him why the delay at the VSO office.  They told me that I already had a docket number, and the time they prepare the brief wont matter, because Im already waiting at the board.  I found out that was an absolute, bald faced lie, when I called the BVA to ask them for the docket number.  They responded it wont be docketed until my VSO prepares a brief and that they were doing so now.  

You can do some things to get your claim moving.  I think its been long enough to email/call the white house hotline.  There is new legislation, recently passed, that is supposed to help this travesty of justice where Vets wait a minimum of 5 years for a BVA appeal.  It remains to be seen if it will work or not.  Rattle the cage of the white house about your plight.  It should not hurt.