EAD (WorkPermit)

Hi folks,

I have been following this forum for a while and it's been helpful, so sharing what I did. I filed for an L2 EAD renewal concurrently with L2 extension.

Application received: Feb 9th (by this time my L2 extension had been approved through premium processing)
March 11th: Mailed in a letter with a request for expedite along with the notice of L2 approval. Severe financial loss was the reason - I had to resign from my job (which they were willing to hold for a few weeks).
March 13th: request received by California center
April 5th: Called to request status of expedite service. It had been three weeks since my previous EAD had expired and I was worried about how much longer I could keep my employer waiting. The customer service representative was very polite and helpful but could not give me an update as to whether my expedite request was being processed. She did read out a generic notice that typically an expedite request will get a response in 5 days but it may take longer. And it's only the director of the center who can approve it. She said she didn't have any more information but if I wanted to call the CSC center I could try. Turns out it's the same number!
I hung up, came back and read a post again from another poster in this forum about how he had successfully gotten his expedited. So decided to try again! I called back. This time the lady asked me if the previous person had registered an SR. Again explained the full circumstances and she was sympathetic and noted an SR. She told me that she had noted this as a 2nd service request, that the first one had not been responded to despite it being nearly 3 weeks plus the details of my case.
Like everyone else I have been checking the status 4 times a day! and it stayed "Case received"
April 7th: Just now minutes ago, I saw it change to "new card being produced". It skipped the whole approved stage and I hope I get it soon!

A couple of things:
1. My lawyer was very discouraging about the expedite request. I pushed him to do it and he did the minimum (literally copy pasted my reasons from my email).
2. He kept telling me USCIS can take any amount of time to respond, which is technically correct. But there is more responsiveness at times post an SR and frankly, the customer reps were really nice even though they have limited ability to make any changes!
3. There's no harm in asking.

This makes my whole process under 60 days (still have to receive card) which is around the same amount of time as the first time around!

I don't know if the SR helped but I am inclined to believe it did given general timelines I have heard. In a way, the failure to respond to the first expedite request ended up being in my favor cause I guess in their system it meant they hadn't done something. Or maybe it was just my time cause this batch got processed (they do it in batches and not sequentially is my understanding.)

Anyway, thanks for everyone who posted their experience. It's what urged me to be more aggressive about the expedite! Now fingers crossed my card comes next week so I can get back to work.

Good luck!