10 days from the day that they mail not from when you receive the mail.

Video Transcribed: This is a Earl Lawson. I am an attorney with the unemployment experts. I am the man you’ll be talking to if you hire an attorney to represent you. Now, I’m here to talk about the five fatal mistakes a claimant makes whenever they’re applying for their benefits to the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.

First mistake that they make is to confuse the date that they set their deadline by. It’s 10 days from the day that they mail it, not from the day that you receive it, but from the day that they mail it. So if you’ve got a slow mailman that goes through three or four different areas and then decides he might want to come back to your area, or if he’s three, four days late, you might only have one day or maybe two days to hand in that appeal once you receive it.

Do not make that mistake. If you get it late, you’ll have to fax it in to them so they can get it in quickly. Even though they’re closed on Saturday and Sunday, they only give you 10 days. And if your last day is on a Sunday, then you’ve got to have it in by Friday at 5:00 to their office.

Now, it’s difficult to recover from these because whenever you go to your employment hearing, the first thing you’re going to hear is that you have missed the deadline. And you’ve got to give a reasonable excuse. And I will tell you that Oklahoma Employment Security Commission is very, very strict on this. And a lot of times, you will not be able to present your case as to why you deserve you have your benefits paid to you because they’ll only hear that one part of your hearing.

And if they make a decision that you didn’t have a good enough reason for missing, then they will count that against you and they’ll stop the hearing right there. Or they’ll let you go through with the hearing and then deny it, just on the basis that you didn’t do a timely return on your appeal.

Now, there’s another mistake that they make, and Oklahoma Employment Security Commission counts in calendar days. That means they go for seven days a week, Monday through Sunday. There you go. I mean, most businesses go with the working week that goes through Monday through Friday. Not the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission because it is a government position. Now, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission is very strict on this, and they take very few excuses.

Now, if you don’t get your case heard, there’s no chance that you’re going to get benefits. I have had good success in this in the past, but there are cases in which I’ve lost because they come to me and they didn’t realize that they had two issues to deal with. One was their case, and the second was why did they appeal late? And whenever they come to me, it’s already on the books.

So if you have difficulty with filing your appeal, please call my office, 918-923-3776, and I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions.