Your Texas Benefits

My SNAP benefits were approved over a month ago and I still have not received my card! I’ve called the 211 number & the lone star card number several times. They make it very difficult to get a live person on the phone. I called them last week and they told me I should’ve received my card several weeks ago. Well I never got it! They told me they would cancel that card and send another one. They told me it would be here within 7 business days. Well it’s day 7 & I still don’t have my card!!! I have a family I have to feed! It seems like I won’t ever receive the benefits I was approved for which is why I’m giving them a 1 star review. My application was approved at the beginning of august and we’re already halfway through September!! I understand that sometimes there are system errors or delays in the mail but come on!! At this point, it’s just pure negligence **Update**: After calling around for several weeks informing every representative I spoke to that I never received my card after being approved for SNAP benefits, and requesting a replacement card last Friday that also never arrived, today I was told that ALL of the funds on my card had been spent over the last week!! Why wouldn’t someone tell me this before?! Especially after telling them over & over that I never even received my card?!!! It didn’t raise any red flags that funds in the card were being spent even though I told them repeatedly that I never received it?! This has FRAUD written all over it! I’ll be contacting the state office in the morning to file an official complaint! I am DISGUSTED by my experience with this service!! Stealing funds from people who are in need is just sick and twisted!!

The recent update to the app is incredibly better and user-friendly than it was during the height of the pandemic. (I mention this to give the app development team an idea of which update I’m referring to because I’m not sure when it exactly the new version was rolled out. And I don’t know because it was really confusing using the app before. For security reasons, the app logged me out during long periods of unuse— which were frequent because every time I tried to use it to upload documents OR check my SNAP balance, I couldn’t do it.) However, the new interface is so much cleaner and intuitive. Right off the bat I can see my SNAP balance, freeze my card, read my documents from oldest to newest, and immediately determine which benefits are active and which are not. Honestly, the app seems a lot better than the (also updated) website. (Although the update to the website is also way better than it was before, during the height of the pandemic.) I also like that the app developers realized that the phone app NEEDED to be different from the website. The app wasn’t intuitive before because users had to navigate it, with many clicks, as if it were the website. Overall, I’m so happy with the changes made! Hopefully this helps all of us stay on top of renewal deadlines better, and our active benefits.

I think it sounds better “old fashioned” than old! ;) and for whatever reason, afraid of technology, after many intents for different kind of things. Where I used to fill a paper job-application and submitted in person! I was already getting blocked when heard I need to submit a document... but this app made it so easy!! I thank you. It’s not easy to apply for benefits when I should be contributing and helping others. What is behind to be doing this, is hard to handle, and every other little thing, it looks as a huge one! Maybe I’m the only person who feels like this, maybe not. But I thank the government, this institution and each person involved, like the kind and patience lady that just helped me on the phone, (Mrs. Rose/Rosemary/Rossie?) for making this process less difficult. And whoever created this program/app. Which I think it’s quite kid-friendly, and is what I need to be able to go through. Sincerely, thank you. Cristal Martinez Frank.