Thank you in advance. Hope you can advise me on a SSA DRC issue.

I reached my FRA September 10th 2014.
I applied for SSA retirement benefits 1 year later on my birthday, September 10th 2015.
I have an 8% DRC that was to begin January 2016, and now it is past 10 months and they have not added the DRC to my initial FRA monthly benefit amount.
In April 2016 I had been to my local SSA Office and was informed that there may be delay, and I would be notified by mail regarding receiving the added DRC amount [FRA+8% DRC].
This August 2016 I went to the local office again, and was informed that an email was sent to SSA regarding my DRC correction update, and I will be receiving a letter informing me of the DRC update and a back pay amount. Since I did not receive a SSA notification letter regarding the correction, I called the 1 800 772 1213 # and was advised that they received a request for DRC correction on September 1, 2016 from the local SSA Office, and that I should be getting notification of the DRC update. My October 2016 SSA direct deposit does not show the DRC correction increase or back pay. Should I wait for the November 2016 direct deposit and notification, to see if they correct the issue, or call again now?

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again

Mann

Hi Mann,

When you apply for benefits between ages 66 & 70, delayed retirement credits (DRC) for the year of filing are added later through an automated process. Due to budget limits, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has given this process a relatively low priority, and only runs the updates every other year. The increases due are fully retroactive, but this results in a substantial delay in receiving the proper amount of DRCs.

Because of your inquiry, it sounds like SSA plans to process your partial year DRC recalculation manually as opposed to waiting for the automated process. That requires an action by an employee in one of SSA's payment centers, and those types of actions are processed in the order they are received. How long it will be until your case is processed depends on the size of their backlog of cases, so it's impossible to tell you when to expect to see the increase. Your increase will be fully retroactive to your payment for January 2016, however, and they will pay you the appropriate back pay.

Best, Jerry