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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

I've got to wonder if, after basic Twit-shaming becomes no longer scalable, Google support will basically end up taking the same essential shape as IRS support - if you receive a nastygram, you turn it over to your professional account/attorney/googvocate who's entire specialty is knowing how to "talk to" the organization.

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That is not a great comparison. IRS phone support is actually pretty good. I would be ecstatic if Google could get even halfway there.

They’re actually fantastic and have a genuine desire to arrive at the correct number. I had one take over an hour on the phone to explain to me the logic behind the IRS’s position and, once it became clear that the problem was with a corrupted data import and the cost basis was incorrectly computed, took two more hours of his own time without me having to wait on the phone to arrive at the conclusion that the IRS actually owed me money. He could have resolved the call immediately by saying that he saw my position and that he’d cancel the correction and I probably would’ve accepted it. Instead, he went the extra mile and figured out the correct refund, costing the government hundreds of dollars and two more hours of his time.

I suspect the IRS gets a bad rap because people don’t like owing money and the IRS is usually right when they send corrections, but my experience left me with nothing but respect for their front-line support. To remain as friendly and courteous as they were considering the rage that must be directed towards them on a daily basis is pretty impressive.

The IRS has always been good with me -- they've been fair and fast (for a federal government operation).

My state's revenue department is the one I truly fear.

Illinois? Everything they ever sent was wrong.

Yeah, the IRS is actually very good and the people who answer the phone know what they are doing. I also like that they really try to get a solution you can live with.

Never dealt with the state of ND, but my one dealing with Illinois makes me think its not confined to the tax department. I detail my problems with their DOT in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5521011#5521345

Not Illinois, although I hear that most state revenue agencies are pretty awful.

Point taken, and having seen published phone numbers for various specialty IRS attorneys I did actually think about making a quip to that effect. Furthermore, the IRC itself is more understandable than Google's (et al) "AI"-dartboards.

But the comparison is still appropriate due to the sheer gravity of both situations. If your issue hadn't been worked out over the phone (say it required more subjective interpretation), you likely would have hired someone. Nobody wants to get walked on by an 800lb gorilla.

I've had to work with the IRS in two separate instances in my life and both times they were helpful, patient, and went above and beyond to make sure matters were resolved properly.

My experience is the IRS telling me I owe them $20,000, me calling them three separate times and having estimated wait times of over 3+ hours each time, finally just giving up turning it over to my accountant, who charged me $400 to find out that in fact the IRS owed me $3,000. So I dunno, to me I think it's a pretty good comparison, but obviously from the other replies mileage varies.

That's essentially what Amazon support has become - https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...

I hope you've had a bad experience with the IRS because otherwise it's really frustrating to see the government-targeted analog of libel. Imagine working hard and professionally to serve your country only to have your reputation tarnished like this.

My interactions with tax prep professionals and software have all been far, far worse than my interactions with the IRS. The IRS says exactly what they mean, while everyone else "interprets," does a bad job of it, and leaves you stuck with the bill plus the hassle.

That was not a political comment - merely remarking on the practicalities of dealing with large powerful organizations.

While some aspects of interacting with the IRS may be refreshingly easy compared to expectations, they are not setup to be universally so. See the steep after-the-fact penalties for getting some types of things wrong (as opposed to simply just preventing them in the first place), as well as the prohibitive fees associated with "private letter rulings".

Your appeal to the individual people working there is fallacious, as it would preclude any criticism of organizations as a whole. I have no doubt that the individuals working there are all trying to do a decent job, just as at Google. The problems are at higher levels of complexity. A program segfaulting is not an indictment of the transistors.

"See the steep after-the-fact penalties for getting some types of things wrong (as opposed to simply just preventing them in the first place), as well as the prohibitive fees associated with "private letter rulings"."

Fees for private letter rulings don't seem like a problem to me, because people always have the option of arranging their affairs in a simple and straightforward manner. In order to deter gamesmanship, there needs to be a substantial cost to running close to the edge.

It's only a substantial cost to someone operating on a small scale, so it actually exacerbates the ability of the rich to engage in more gamesmanship than the middle class suckers.