JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Many unemployed Floridians on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA) are required to turn in documents by Monday, or they may need to pay back their unemployment benefits.
“If you received at least one PUA payment in 2021, you need to comply,” said unemployment expert Vanessa Brito.
The Continued Assistance Act requires PUA claimants to provide documents that verify proof of employment prior to collecting unemployment benefits.
It is a new requirement from the Department of Labor that helps weed out fraud.
The Department of Economic Opportunity said these documents must be submitted online via a fact finding form in the claimant’s CONNECT portal.
Not everyone has an “Action Due Date” of March 1, but many do. Claimants will see the “Action Due Date” in their inbox.
“If the claimants cannot prove they were employed and lost their job due to COVID, then they shouldn’t have been eligible for PUA,” Brito said.
Meaning that without these documents, benefits could be halted and the claimant could potentially owe back the money they have received.
“We’ll be homeless if we have to pay this all back,” said Tonia Sutton, one of many who struggled submitting documents.
When attempting to upload documents, Sutton did not press the “add” button before pressing “submit.”
“If they don’t ‘add’ the document, they’re basically submitting a blank form,” Brito said.
This is a mistake many claimants are making. When Sutton found she did not fulfill the requirement, she could not go back to the submission page.
In this case, claimants need to call 1-800-204-2418 and asking to speak to a claims specific agent or use DEO’s new chat feature to request their link be reopened in the portal to submit documentation.
“Have the link reopened and don’t take no for an answer,” Brito said.
Sutton said she made 67 calls to DEO, often receiving different answers.
She said many said there’s nothing they could do. Others said Sutton should fax or email the documents. This is not correct.
“I think right now with the PUA employment verification, it probably has highlighted the issue of misinformation more than anything else,” Brito said.
Other claimants said they are also receiving conflicting information.
Angelina Toledo sent a screenshot to FCN’s Navigating Florida’s Unemployment Maze Facebook group showing a DEO agent telling her to fax her documents.
This is something she knew not to do after learning information in the group.
Toledo said the agent dropped out of the conversation.
“It’s very scary because you have a deadline and you can’t do anything about it,” Toledo said.
These women said they are worried for others who take some of these agents who follow the wrong guidelines and don’t have their documents properly submitted.
“We’re all drowning in debt, we all need the money, and we can’t pay it all back,” Sutton said.
As CONNECT and the call centers are unavailable over the weekend, Monday is the last chance for some to properly submit these documents.
“You have to be persistent. If you’re not, you’re going to have to pay everything back,” Sutton said.
You can confirm your documents have been uploaded by doing the following:
- Click "Inbox"
- Leave all fields BLANK
- Click "Search"
- A refreshed list of correspondence will populate
- The Fact Finding correspondence letter dated 02/01/2021 with the Action Due Date is the letter requesting your PUA Employment Verification
- The Fact Finding under should contain your documents
- Click on the Issued Date to review the uploaded document
- Pop-Up Blocker MUST BE TURNED OFF
- If you uploaded more than one document, you will show multiple Fact Findings under the initial request