Problems with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity’s website for applying for unemployment benefits take their toll on Polk County residents.

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LAKELAND — The COVID-19 pandemic has given many people nightmares, but for people looking for relief through state unemployment benefits, the nightmare extends into the waking hours.

READ MORE: Florida’s unemployment website down for 3 days as state tries to make payments faster

“Even logging in now, it’s brutal. It takes forever to load,” said Sara Ball, who was helping her daughters — Keitha, 21, and Katie, 18 — with the unemployment claim process. “It’s a nightmare.”

Ball began applying for her older daughter on March 23, nine days after she was laid off from her job as a cafeteria worker at Ridge Community High School, she said.

READ MORE: 6% of Florida unemployment claims have been paid out

After many attempts that day to sign onto the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity website to make an application, she tried the following day during the evening on the assumption there would be less online traffic, Ball said.

She eventually did get on that night, but she was kicked off midway through the application, meaning she had to start over.

“There was no way to save the information until the end,” said Ball, which involves going through three or four separate screens.

Ball did not succeed until a couple days later, when she got up at 4 a.m. to make a successful attempt, she said.

That strategy became ineffective the following week, when the department limited access to the website from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Ball said. She has repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to check in on the status of her daughters’ applications.

“You would think they would want to encourage people to apply after hours,” she added.

Three other people who talked to The Ledger about their frustrations with the unemployment website echoed Ball’s story.

“I got halfway through, then I got kicked off,” said Yvette Navarro, 49, of Lakeland, who added it took at least a dozen times a day over two weeks to get even that far.

Navarro eventually completed an application on April 16, but she didn’t get notification of her eligibility for unemployment benefits until Monday, she said. She lost her job as an office worker at Radiology and Imaging Specialists in Lakeland on April 2.

“It was very frustrating because I didn’t know,” Navarro said. “Things like this, where I’m not in control and don’t know where the money is coming from, it throws you off. I’m very anxious.”

Learning she is eligible for unemployment benefits relieved her anxiety only partially, she said.

“I’m a little relieved, but I’ve lost my medical insurance,” Navarro said.

The Balls and Navarro are hardly alone.

As of April 4, the Economic Opportunity Department had received 13,014 unemployment applications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, or 4.3% of the county’s workforce, according to its website.

As of Saturday, the department had received applications from 824,279 people statewide and had determined the eligibility on 610,152 claimants or 74%, the website said. However, it had paid on just 209,713 claims, or 25%, totaling $201 million.

The agency website had no county-level breakdowns on claims processed or paid.

For Erin Hagmire, 39, of Lakeland, the wait on her eligibility has become desperate.

Hagmire is down to $2 in change and $1.27 in her PayPal account after she managed to complete her application on March 20, shortly after she lost her job as a server at the Red Lobster restaurant in Lakeland.

Several friends whom she helped with their unemployment applications over the following two weeks have already received benefits, Hagmire said.

“I am becoming desperate and discouraged. I am trying to 'keep my head up' but getting tired of hearing that, as well,” Hagmire said.

She’s sought help from her local federal and state legislators, who have not returned the phone messages she left.

“It’s frustrating. You can’t get a live voice anywhere,” Hagmire said. “I'm tired. And this is only the beginning.”

The problems with the state’s unemployment website also may be working to its disadvantage.

Hagmire’s mother — Nedra Doss, 63, of Lakeland — has been receiving unemployment benefits since November, and she recently got a job for 30 days through a temporary worker agency, Doss said.

Doss left that job on April 8 and has been trying to report her income since then, she said. She ended up sending a certified letter on April 20 after failing to log on since April 9.

She doesn’t expect to get benefits during that 30 days, Doss said, but she worries about future benefits. She feared the department would sanction her for not reporting the income, despite repeated attempts to do so online.

“So I will probably be kicked out of the whole damned program because the state of Florida is too inept to resolve the problem,” she said. “Funny how Wall Street and the fat cats get money really quick, yet the working stiff — stave them out.”

Ball, Doss, Hagmire and Navarro all expressed additional frustration when the Economic Opportunity Department shut down the website from Friday to Monday. Anybody who tried to sign on over that period got a message that the department needed to shut down its computer system in order to process the applications deluge during the past month.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials have asked affected Florida residents for patience and understanding given the unprecedented number of applications filed in just a few weeks since the COVID-19 economic shutdown.

Ball and Doss said they understood the state is dealing with a huge number of applications, but they expressed little patience or understanding.

Ball noted that even small businesses can hire outside firms to handle unexpected surges on their websites.

“If these tiny companies can do it, the government can do it,” Ball said. “We’ve heard no word, no emails, no nothing.”

Doss was even more caustic.

“The citizens and taxpayers deserve and (should) demand better,” she said. “The system is either inept or corrupt. My bet is both.”

Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-802-7591.