If the reporting system ask you to call EI call centre after you have completed your EI report, you normally have to call them through the 1-800-206-7218 phone line. Unfortunately, due to extreme high volume of the calls, many claimants have experience difficulties reaching a call centre agent, wait for over 4 hours or simply have their call dropped.
Service Canada E-form
There is potentially an alternative. Recently the Service Canada centre has started an email service where you can send them a message through their online E-form portal and a Service Canada centre agent will call you back to help you follow up on the status of your EI claim. Those agent are not EI processing office agent, they are the Service Canada centre agents who used to work at the local centres. Once you have submitted your request, they will get back to you through a phone call within 1-3 business days.
You may reach out to them through Canada.ca website at: www.canada.ca/service-canada-e-service (Please copy and past this link into your browser) Once you entered the hyperlink, it will re-direct you to their secure online form portal, https://sr-ds.powerappsportals.com/caseintakeen/
Clearing a pending report
Normally a pending report can be cleared by a call centre agent directly. When the Service Canada centre agent called you back, they will first confirm your request and ask for your identity. Once passed the security verification, they will start to assist you. If you have a EI pending report issue, the only thing they can do is to send a message to EI processing office to have a processing agent to clear it for you. The request will usually take up to 21 days. This is the only alternative way clear your pending report issue.
E-form Security Word
Due to privacy reason, the call that you receive will likely be a “No Caller ID” call. When they called you, they will tell you that they have received your email request and will ask you some security questions to confirm your identity (e.g. your SIN, your full first and last name, the program(s) you inquired, etc). A best practice to ensure the legitimacy of the call back, we recommend you to put a security word(s) in the “Additional Information” field of the form and ask the Service Canada agent to provide it before asking for your identity.
For example: “Security word(s): “Presto”. Please provide the security word before asking for my identity on the phone. Thank you”
In this case, you can rest assure that the caller is really from Service Canada and the agent have read your security word(s) message.
(Service Canada E-form screen shot)
