r/FED_VERA_VSIP_DRPers

United States Department of Agriculture \ Agricultural Marketing Service

Separation date 2/28/2026

Annual payout 3/30/2026

OPM received application 5/8/2026

Initial Interim payment 5/15/2026

Interim payment 5/28/2026

Finalized 8/11/2026

Took DRP. Received extra paycheck- repaid. Rec’d second notice to pay. Anyone else have this issue?

Just curious. It is going on 9 for me. I'm about at the end of my patience rope (short to begin with). Wishing everyone the best of luck, as luck seems to be the only force guiding our applications thru (the process) or lack thereof.

I retired last September and was finalized at the end of April. Now, almost 4 months after finalization, I am still having to manually pay for my dental premium each month. It was my understanding that it is supposed to be automatically deducted from the monthly annuity. I was expecting that there might be a couple of months lag before they got it straightened out and automatic deductions would start but this is almost 4 months now. Is this typical of others experience? Wondering how much longer I should wait before contacting OPM as the issue would be at their end. They also moved my due date up several weeks, inexplicably, for this last bill. Fortunately, I had been on top of it online and paid it a few days before the due date.

Hi all, just wanted to provide info. to any of you going through the appeal process related to your annuity. I called OPM yesterday and was advised that they are starting to review appeals filed in June (so about 2 months behind). I filed my appeal July 23rd via certified mailed and was told they received it and then given the timeline.

On one of the Friday hotline calls Mr. Goins mentioned that Vera was still active for some people. Is there any way to know who that is for? Or is it a case by case basis? Where can One go for more information?

I woke up early on the west coast and made my first call to OPM. The operator was not friendly and let me know that there was a government shut down and they are overworked. She was on the defense from the moment she got on the call.

I retired on Dec 31 and she said my agency didn’t even put in my paper work until April 1. I asked why it says my application was received on Feb 17.

I do have a divorce. Then she said something about it being in the central room on May 13 on hold but on August 4 it went back to the adjudicator.

It was disappointing to say the least. I was expecting at least someone understanding and compassionate. Silly me!

I guess it’s at least good to know that something happened on August 4 but she wouldn’t even have told me that if I hadn’t kept asking questions.

Back to waiting…..

It was fairly easy to get transferred to a real person (there was a long wait and then I opted to have them call me back.)

I have been in the final review stage (over 8 weeks) since late May or early June....kind of ridiculous because I am consistently told that there is nothing missing from my package and that they have everything they need. I have to say, when I do get to talk to a human, they are very helpful and nice. I am most concerned that the longer this takes, the more FEHB I will have to pay back instead of having it just taken from my annuity.

DRP'd over a year ago, started interim payments in January...still not finalized. WTH?

Hello Fellow DPR’ers,

I am in need of a sanity check: has anyone that has military time that they bought back and supposedly added to their total federal service time seen any issue with their interim payments not accounting for their military time? I took DRP2 and separated/retired in Sep2025, started getting interim payments in Apr 2026 way lower than expected (only 14% of expected annuity). I am still waiting my OPM package to get of the development phase (5 months now), but I have called and talked to the helpdesk several times (10) and only one of them is listed on my portal history (tangent). What I have gathered between the multiple calls is that the IRS processed my interim payment not OPM (aggregation from 3 inquiry discussions), the IRS even after accepting and acknowledging the completion of the military buyback only processes my retirement interim calculation based off of the time I worked for the IRS (6 of the total 26yrs 3mons). OPM has claimed that they cannot adjust or reevaluate what the IRS submitted and that I would have to wait until OPM finalizes my package.

If you have experienced something similar, can you share what the results were? I am extremely concerned I am going to get screwed out of some time/money in this hands off OPM process. Also, at what point, if ever, will I get a real person, I can contact that is actually working my package of is that something OPM no longer does?  My assumption was “development phase” meant someone was assigned and working the package, but after talking to the OPM helpdesk back in June I was told that was not the case its only moved to some new internal queue; more OPM Marco Polo.