S: Sorry for the late reply. I never called. My AME called once to see if it was being processed so he could tell me when to come in---that was at the 4 week mark. The folks at AMAS had a tracking mechanism and followed on a regular basis (every 30 days, then I think they did informal follow ups at the 6 week point and then I had it just over 8 weeks).
I was aware of the backlog due to increased SAI requests and low staffing.
My next SAI (renewal) took 2 weeks.
Hang in there and best of luck getting back quickly.