Payment withheld due to weekly benefit amount is greater than deductions (Ava: unemployment, live)

[JOHNSONCTODD]

I have received a letter stating that my Payment of $353 was withheld due to the weekly benefit amount is greater than deductions. I have certified for 2 weeks and answered the question Unavailable instead of available. I can't access those weeks online, nor on the phone to correct it to available. I am unable to reach anyone or get any of my questions answered. How can I fix this issue if I am unable to via phone or online?

[godofthunder9010]

Yeah filing for unemployment is nitpicky like that. If you don't answer every question exactly right, it rejects you. You have to check the box that says "available for work" since you probably are available to work from home. The timing tends to be really screwy too.

I lost my job at the end of March all because of the virus, just like most of the recently unemployed. I'd been through the whole unemployment mess several years ago, so I had a good idea what to expect.

The way that Illinois is setup, if anything goes weird, you have to call in. No other way to fix it. I applied, but I knew the system and knew that I'd almost certainly need to call and talk to someone. Started calling on Monday. Called at least 5 times per day, suffering through all of the IVR menus over and over and over again. On Friday, the IVR finally did something different. I instead of saying, "Due to Covid-19, we are experiencing an extremely high call volume. Please try again later." On Friday, it changed to "The average wait time is 57 minutes." I waited a bit. It told that I could press a button and somebody would call me back within 30 minutes, so I did that an hung up. Three hours later, nobody had called, so I learned that was a bad idea and called back again. This time, it said, "The Average wait time is 37 minutes" so this time I waited. Live operator was able to sort things out pretty quickly.

Anyways, good luck with it!!

[mpt69]

I answered AVAILABLE to WORK and I'm still getting a letter and an IVR response with that "weekly benefit amount is greater than deductions" sentence. I took pics of pages for proof and I've got co-workers answering the same way but they are getting checks. I don't have kids so what are they talking about. I'm going to try calling all day like godofthunder9010 did. I've done it before with no success. I do know that once this over every state's unemployment system needs a mandatory overhaul and upgrade