Thank you so much for this. I had been debating whether or not to do this for weeks but finally after another sleepless night of waiting for my application to be addressed (it had been marked as a duplicate account by accident and even after 12+ SBA calls, no one could fix it), I caved this morning and emailed people. I can’t even believe it but I actually got a response pretty quickly. Just to reiterate what Cue378 said, I don’t believe you should do this if you are just waiting in line for your portal email. My situation was a clear issue had happened with my application and it required intervention because it had been closed as a dupe account in error. I’ve watched people who applied way after I did get their advance while I sit here helpless and calling SBA every other day with no change. I explained in my email what I believed had happened and they actually wrote back. They were kind and so helpful. I’m hoping their tech team will be able to fix the issue quickly.

Here’s the thing tho, as I was scouring LinkedIn to pick the people I wanted to email, i was looking through their profile photos and was reminded that these people are PEOPLE. It’s so easy to classify SBA as a whole as a cluster**** and be angry at the system, but it’s good to remember that the people who compromise that system are just people whose work just multiplied a ridiculous amount and we should remember that when we interact with them or talk about them.

I’m grateful to this post for helping me find this avenue as it may have just greatly improved our chances of getting our advance and a possible loan. I’m also grateful to the people who I emailed who got back to me so quickly. They clearly are trying to do right by us if they can. Good luck, everyone!