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Experience of a U.S. Citizen residing overseas [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-06-24

Hi, My name is Mark and I am a South African citizen married to a U.S. citizen from Tennessee. We met 20 years ago, online in MSN chat rooms and resident in South Africa. The reason I am writing this is because 1:) my wife has been diagnosed with vascular dementia and is pretty much bed-ridden, so getting aound is difficult, and 2:) to highlight my wife’s ongoing bad experience with an agency called Direct Express. For those that may not know, they are an agency that issues debit cards (which are affiliated to Comerica Bank) into which Social Security benefit payments are made, insrtead of SS sending a monthly paper check. What has transpired recently is quite distressing, so let me get straight into it.

My wife’s Direct Express card, into which her Social Security Retirements are being paid, expired at the end of October, 2022 and as is the norm with Direct Express, they automatically mailed a new card to your current postal address via regular mail. In our case, it never arrived as the postal service in South Africa is basically non-existent. So I had to make a plan to get my wife to a telephone so she could call Direct express to request that a new card be sent via courier to our address. Here is where the problems started. Firstly, they wanted her to send some form of ID, initially requesting specifically the REAL ID, which she does not have as she has not been back to the U.S.A in 20 years. After much back and forth, involving many trips from hospital to telephone, we were eventually able to send her Social Security card and her birth certificate, both of which were specifically requestd by Direct Express.

For reasons unknown, these documents were not accepted and were advised by Direct Express to visit our nearest Social Security office. Wait, what??? Do you not comprehend, we are in South Africa, there are no SS offices in South Africa!! What now? Eventually I managed to obtain an email address for a person at a Social Security office in the U.S.A and explained the situation to this person but as much as they tried, they could not assist in this matter, we have to resolve it with Direct Express.

So, as it currently stands, my wife’s SS benenfits are now sitting in an account that we cannot access, no card seems to be forthcoming and my wife has basically been left high and dry. As of this wirting we have logged a complaint on the Consumer Financial Protection Board website and are hoping that this will somehow produce positive results.

I am putting this out there as I feel the system has let my wife down quite badly and as an outsider, it just seems incomprehensible that a government agency could treat a U.S. citizen with such apathy and indifference, especially considering she is not well, which exacerbates the whole problem.

Thank you for your time.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/24/2177333/-Experience-of-a-U-S-Citizen-residing-overseas

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