Why lax the timelines? Companies have an army of employees. They can deal with the consequences, unlike individuals.

Someone comes home dead from work. Someone's close family passed away. Someone went to vacation and didn't get the (snail) mail in time.

A lot of things make the 10-ish day window of "raise issue now" impossible to honour.

However, not for companies.

If people are overworked - hire more.

If someone's family member died - there's everyone else in the section to take care of stuff until they return.

If the only person responsible for dealing with this stuff is out on vacation, it's a managerial issue. One that shouldn't have happened in the first place.

While the reasons companies raise sound PR-friendly, they're really not justifications - only mere excuses.

A company is a system, and if it fails a 10-day deadline of dealing with their financial obligations (after months of failing to provide a core customer service on top), it's a failing system. The only one whose fault it is is the company itself and its (clearly sub-par) management.

Individuals can have the excuse of "life happened". Companies cannot, as they're not living beings. Especially since sooner or later, everyone is replaceable in their eyes, and because most can always hire more people without a single meaningful change in any KPI.

About the deadlines: yes, they should be extended. Claimants usually don't care much abd start the process after months of backlogged claims anyway. Even for a single claimee it's beneficial - a slower buth more robust system has higher odds of honouring a request.

However, companies have absolutely no ground to request an extension because they're big. If anything, it should be shortened.