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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

One of the most annoying things is that some US government agencies still require payment via money order. For example, we were not able to get our daughter’s birth certificate without paying via MO. That turned out to be the most inconvenient $20 I’ve ever scrounged up.

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Before TransferWise became widely available, and would have mitigated this, I needed to get a birth record from the civil registry (Standesamt) in Kaiserslautern, Germany. I had the option of using wire transfer, for a $35 international wire fee from my credit union.

Alternatively, I suppose owing to K-town's long association with the US military, I could mail them a USPS money order. Not an "international money order," a regular USPS "Postal Money Order" denominated in US dollars. For $1.25, it was no contest.

TransferWise is incredible. It was cheaper for me to take USD in my account, forex it to Yen, send the Yen to transferwise when paying a co-creator in USD. Sending a USD swift transfer would skip 2 forex transactions yet TransferWise is still cheaper.

I'm curious to learn why this is the case. Does your transfer involve non-US account? If both accounts are in the U.S. there are bank accounts that don't charge wire fee, or you can use Zelle / Venmo / FB Messenger / Square Cash and avoid paying altogether if the amount is small.

TransferWise has been a game changer for me in paying overseas contractors. It's such an excellent product and my limited experience of it has left me a very happy customer.

Inconvenience is an understatement. I tried to get my kid's birth certificate from our state's health department; waited three weeks for them to send it back because of a minor typo. Ended up spending one morning driving 1.5 hours (one way) to the capitol to get it in person.

Let me tell you about my actual birth date and the birth date the social security administration has on file being different.

I have spent at least a decade trying to get them to correct it but as far as they are concerned I was born one month earlier than the date on my birth certificate.

I gave up and when I retire will enjoy one extra month of social security benefits courtesy of the federal tax payers.

Have you contacted your member of Congress? They have constituent services that help with these kinds of things.

You could also submit a Privacy Act correction request.

Not quite the same but my father misspelled my name on my birth certificate, but spelled it correctly on my as ss application. Didn't find out until it was flagged when I was 16 and getting my driver's license. It has caused me problems several times in background checks and the like.

> I gave up and when I retire will enjoy one extra month of social security benefits courtesy of the federal tax payers.

$10 says that they finally fix the error after you collect your first check, and then prosecute you for fraud.

Did you also have to apply for it via fax?

You can get one at a Walgreens.

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