SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – After weeks of waiting, Tuesday marked the day California’s EDD website was ready for out of work business owners, independent contractors, self employed workers, freelancers and gig workers to apply for pandemic unemployment assistance.
“This is really important to us, it’s been five plus weeks and we haven’t had any assistance from the federal government,” Cindy Ivester said.
Unfortunately applying for benefits proved to be a lot more difficult than Calistoga small business owner Cindy Ivester expected.
“The only place I can get to is enter my drivers license and from there it crashes,” Ivester said.
It’s a familiar story with those going to the website.
“The site crashed at least a dozen times I think it was more than that for me,” Antonio Melara said.
San Francisco hair stylist Antonio Melara started trying to fill out the online form at 5:30 in the morning and each time he got to the last step, the site crashed.
“It’s not only frustrating but disheartening not to know where you can get help,” Melara said.
After three hours of trying, Melara was finally successful.
“I am extremely thankful if, when I get the unemployment since I have been self employed for over 7 years and this has never happened before so I wasn’t sure I would get the help I would need but it will pay off in the end, hopefully fingers crossed,” Melara said.
Ivester hasn’t been as lucky, the site continues to crash for her but she will keep trying
“What choice do I have, what choice do any of us have but to keep trying so that’s what we’ll do,” Ivester said.
EDD officials say the site isn’t crashing, just straining due to high volume.
They say they are trying to increase capacity and in the meantime their advice if you’re having trouble is to try a little bit later.
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