CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For weeks now, we’ve been hearing how difficult it is to navigate North Carolina's unemployment website.
Now, legislators are jumping in the fight and a team of lawyers is offering to help people – for free.
Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians say they haven’t received checks and others say they can’t even get that far because the website keeps kicking them off. Now there's a group of people trying to help.
Amanda Reaves usually works as a lash artist at a salon. Like so many others, she's been out of work since March, and is just trying to make sure her 20-month-old son has enough to eat.
"It's been a wave of emotions," Reaves said. "You were going to rob from Peter to pay Paul for certain bills."
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It took weeks for Reaves to sign up for unemployment.
"Every time I went on the website, I would get to a certain point and it would crash, sign me off completely," she said.
She finally turned to the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy. The group provides free legal advice. Ed Byron heads up their newly formed unemployment insurance COVID-19 response project to help guide people through the process.
“It is a difficult system it’s a complex application,” Byron said.
Reaves says once the website worked for her, it was still overwhelming and she was grateful to have help from the center.
“They just helped guide me through each of the steps," she said.
Still, once people apply, the next frustration is the waiting game to get paid – what once took 14 days can now take more than a month and more than 50,000 people are calling a day trying to track those checks.
Byron says it's a matter of manpower in those offices.
"Only 80% being answered, assuming people are willing to wait hours to speak to a representative," Byron said.
His advice is to call your local lawmakers and demand more staffing. WCNC Charlotte checked in with Sen. Jeff Jackson, who says there's not enough staff to answer the phones and process the claims, but did say all eyes in Raleigh are paying attention and trying to get it fixed as soon as possible.