Woman can't stop unemployment payments after landing job
LAKE MARY, Fla. - While thousands of out-of-work Floridians struggle to get their unemployment benefits, one Central Florida woman has the opposite problem.
It’s the last thing Debbie Purvis thought she’d be dealing with: signing up for unemployment benefits, after losing her job, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Marion County woman found a new job after only a few weeks, but she’s still receiving unemployment payments, although she says she has attempted countless times to let the Florida Department of Economic (DEO) opportunity know she is now employed.
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"I’ve tried and tried on the site to find somewhere to tell them I’ve gained employment, and have not been successful. I did find a place to email them, but no one’s responded,” Purvis says.
She says she also attempted to call the DEO and is always told it’s a high call volume, and they can’t take her call. If it was a simple unemployment check mailed to her house, she’d mail it back but, she says, it’s not that easy.
"They go directly into my account, so it’s not like I can just package it up and send it back,” she adds
Purvis is now desperate for the state to stop her unemployment payments, because she knows the money is not rightfully hers, since she found new employment.
“I’ve got to get it back to them, and I want it stopped, if I keep getting more I’m gonna be like 'okay, no, no, no.!' I don’t want to owe a big debt back to the state.”
FOX 35 News attempted to reach the DEO but did not hear back at the time this article was published.
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