My business might have 32 days before it's shut down by NYC [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
To answer some common questions:
a) I have already emailed & called, and I patiently await a reply...
b) You can't re-renew with a 13 month old PIN if you already renewed.
c) You can't show up in person without an appointment.
d) Appointments are only granted by means of contact that don't reply.
e) Yes I have two other licenses that AREN'T expired, but those are useless, they are for selling laptops, not fixing laptops, which I don't do anymore anyway after the city was unable to give me a straight answer on how to do so without being fined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8_9WGk3Ok - I need this license in the video to be able to actually do repairs.
f) Just listen to this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8_9WGk3Ok This is what I am dealing with. After 15+ minutes and being transferred to two people, they can't answer a basic question about a rule they fined me for breaking that they can't even explain. They never emailed or called me back, which has been the behavior I have come to expect over the past nine years.
I am serious, if you work for the city and have any way of applying my 13 month old payment to this license renewal, you have the gratitude of myself & 14 of my employees who will get to continue paying their rents, mortgages, & food bill for their kids.
In spite of what people think, I am not a millionaire. If I'm forced to close - I can't afford to pay these people. I do not want that to happen.
I am not meming, I never get responses to DCA emails - not 3 months ago, not for NINE YEARS, and I don't expect to be able to now. Since I cannot sort this out in person due to the COVID closures, this channel is my only hope of reaching someone who can help me sort this out.
> d) Appointments are only granted by means of contact that don't reply.
Similar thing happened to me recently with the IRS. Got a notice about them needing to verify my identity and gave me a number to call. Had been calling for months and would always get a message saying they were too busy and to try the following day. After trying a few other options to no avail, I decided to show up at my local IRS office without an appointment (which I couldn’t get anyway). They first turned me down, then told me that maybe if I waited for a few hours they might be able to see me at the end of the day, then after about 20min and them clearly not being busy, they talked to me and was able to resolve the issue within 15min.
So, even though I was told I couldn’t show up without an appointment, and they tried turning me down, just by being there they finally paid attention to me. Yes, it was uncomfortable and annoying to have to do that, but it worked.
And I think most people want to help others, but even if they’re selfish and don’t care about helping anyone, they’ll help you if you’re persistent and physically present.
Like the classic parable of the persistent widow: Luke 18:2-5
“He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”
I guess this is one critique of exclusive remote working: it’s pretty easy to end up ghosted by someone in the approval chain for something.
Haha, I discovered that with my bank. Phone calls were just dismissed with "we can't do anything about it" or getting repeatedly "transferred" to a dial tone.
Showing up and sitting in the branch manager's office until he fixed the problem worked. It was a $600 problem so it was worth the effort.
Details: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bank-of-america-to-offer-free-o...
After being on hold for >1h, I went to my local bank branch. The manager told me they could only call the same support line. I was sure they must have an internal path to resolve things. He denied that this was an option. I don’t know if I believe that, as it seems unlikely.
This! If you've never worked in a very large organization, it's a huge pro to working in the office that can be overlooked.
I yanked at the door until it opened. Walked in and found employees to deal with…
Even if doors are closed and locked, showing up can still get the job done.
(This is not a method I would elect, but dysfunction begets dysfunction.)
https://www.irs.gov/advocate/the-taxpayer-advocate-service-i...
No one would talk to me, not matter how many times I explained for three months. I eventually took to driving to the INS building every single day until they finally gave up and issued me a number within 20 minutes.
Three months of not being allowed to work nor being able to leave the country was frustrating in the extreme.
Anyway, apparently the right way to deal with this is to contact your representative (for me it was a congressman or senator, for this guy their state-level person) and ask them to help.
I think I need to emphasize this since many on HN are immigrants: Congresscritters don't care if you're eligible to vote or not (I wasn't). Hell, half the time they don't even care if you're in their district because they're in a safe seat that can only be practically challenged by someone local who can pull donors away. A letter advocating for some policy position that's decided by realpolitik anyway usually just get a form response, but an reasonable letter from a constituent asking for actionable help will almost always get the white glove treatment.
Works much more often that you would expect.
I filled out the online form for missing packages and it said someone would follow up on the ticket number. No one did. I called the main USPS number and got through to an operator. They said someone should have followed up and then created a new ticket number. Still no follow up.
I called again and they gave me the number for some major customer affairs center (forget the name). First time the voicemail was full, second time I left a message but never heard back.
The local post office finally did call me back ... from an Unknown number (WTF?) so I didn't pick it up, then left a vague message about the package and said to call back the local post office number.
Every time I've tried to call that number it just stays on hold and then goes to a busy signal.
No issues for over a year sending to her husband. Then one day I’m told he’s not allowed to receive money.
I call WU. They say he can receive. I send money and WU cancels it. I call again, they said he needs to call. He calls and they say there’s no issues. I call they say no issue. WU cancels when he attempts to collect.
I call again they said I need to contact GCR department. 2 months they won’t reply. Emailed several times. Called again. Talked to WU on Twitter, everyone tells me to contact gcr. No one will reply.
Black hole support systems.
> since I cannot sort this out in person due to the COVID closures
...which I interpret as "the office I would go to to sort this out is empty; there is nobody there; the lights are off and the doors are locked. Everyone who would be working there is working from home."
I would think that you did your due diligence by calling and that it's their fault at that point.
Also, calling should never be a requirement. What if someone is deaf? Requiring someone to call without an online alternative should 100% be an ADA violation.
That said, you shouldn't have to call up a politician and beg in order to get government departments to perform functions that they are supposed to be performing.
If you have some ultra-edge case involving your deceased uncle's estate's something or other it can be understandable. But this should be a routine business transaction and the city is incapable of making it happen. He's trying to give them a large amount of money FFS, you'd think they'd accept it and then do the menial amount of work to make the records on their end reflect that.
Getting things moving in city hall's bureaucracy is in the councilman's remit, as is improving the state of the bureaucracy to prevent further problems in the future. They might not be the ideal person to handle anything in particular, but they should sure know who to talk to, and they should make time to do it.
There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast. But I've seen appeals to elected officials fix lots of issues with government bureaucracy.
However, the essence of the matter isn't just about putting you in a cage - it's about excessive and capricious penalties with no real recourse. And those exist aplenty in the private sector. Nor do all laws broken necessarily equate to imprisonment.
In practice, for perceived infractions against whatever rules the powerful organization has, private organizations are pretty ruthless up to but not quite reaching imprisonment. Pseudo-monopolists cutting service, or hefty financial penalties up to and including losing pretty much everything, holding your data hostage: that's all fair game.
These two things aren't the same; but I do think they're both bad and scary enough to warrant not just concern, but in an ideal world, rules. You know, for example, constraints for government, and licensing rules for business.
Historically speaking this is completely false. Even now you can find individual examples of businesses doing things like this, especially in places with little rule of law.
There is nothing magical about businesses - they are made up of the same people that make up governments. Those people have the same power trips regardless of their positions.
Because of its presence on public utility poles, there is a lot that they can do about Comcast. Many people prevail getting Comcast to do stuff by writing cities. The problem is the cushy job Comcast gives people after a long stint in government service in favor of Comcast. That shit isn’t a conspiracy.
What is it then?
You can't have the good without the bad. I'd like to see those people come out and say these are acceptable losses.
a) checked my soldering skills b) looked to see whether I got dust between the LCD cell & backlight layers when doing screen replacement c) checked to see what quality of iPhone screens we use for screen repairs d) asked or tested my ability to do my job
You pay the troll toll, and you get a paper that goes on your wall. I could be the best tech in the world, or I could be a giant idiot... you'd never know.
Some people have the mistaken impression that being licensed means I have been tested, inspected, etc.. nope. They inspect to make sure your business cards have your license number on them. They don't inspect to figure out if you actually do good work for your customers.
If you google portatronics 46th st, you will learn about the business way faster than if you show up in person, take down the license number, look up their license number, etc.
Further, I have had angry customers leave bad reviews, file chargebacks, etc. Of all the customers I've had in the past 9 years with a DCA license, I had one go to the DCA over an issue they had with the post office that I quickly resolved with a full refund. This is one out of over 40,000 people in nine years, during COVID when the post office was being screwy with everything.
My point is, this just doesn't happen anymore. but I've had TONS of people take grievences to google/yelp, and 99% of the time we give them a call, say mea culpa, ask what we can do to fix it, and work it out and it gets turned into a 5 star again.
People who have a problem go to Yelp/Google to leave a review, or their credit card company for a chargeback. You won't find much related to the reputation of the business using the DCA because it's not the way this generation handles these issues.
We've moved on from this system. It's a system designed to be useful for a pre-internet era, and exists solely so that the city can generate revenue. It's important to call a spade a spade.
When government works, this is actually a good thing.
More seriously though: Rossmann's troubles are in the domain of business licenses, a licensing system that sounds too complex, staff that are not properly trained in the services they provide (or are incompetent for other reasons), and likely under-staffing in the departments he interacts with. My interpretation is this is more damning of the city itself than the principle of licensing.
I'm sure the list goes on, but the notion that a govt worker who knows nothing about the practical side of the business and that does not care about how those insanities of the law will destroy jobs (this is the guy who will fine you) combined with an apathetic worker behind a desk with no incentive or reason to be responsive to you when they f up will make anything safer is just utopian.
I just hope that people who run away from California and nyc realize that these policies just don't work. If you are in doubt about how much of the homelessness in California is the fault of the govt licenses/red tape just look up on YouTube how much bureaucracy you have to go through to build more housing. One guy had to wait 4 years and spend millions in lawyers just to get a no from the city council.
For example, my city had an issue where donation boxes would pop up on city lots next to parks and become dumpsters. The city implemented a licensing scheme, which forced the companies and non-profits to collect from the boxes at a regular frequency, and now the problem is solved. No bags of old books left soaking in the rain turning into useless pulp. But someone could argue the licensing scheme stops some non-profits from collecting much needed donations. It totally does, but it's worth it.
As your anecdote suggested, licenses are typically implemented for a reason. Quite often those reasons deal with people who are taking advantage of a situation, with little regard to the interests of others or even the legality of their actions. I will admit that licenses can be problematic, but I honestly cannot think of a good alternative so I support licensing as the best option we have available at present.
Credible alternative: don't have licenses. They're not a gift from god. Businesses existed before them and continue to exist without them. Can there be a quality problem? Sure, but consumer protection laws will apply regardless of licenses.
By your logic if a service fails in a chain of services for a piece of software to work, we should call the failure an inevitable part of the system and throw the whole thing out. Complex things can have more points of failure. It seems like simplifying the renewal process here by removing or automating one or more steps is the sensible thing to do.
How in the world is this now a comment on the validity of licensing services? An organization has bad customer service so you should throw the entire field out?
I know someone who was on hold with an airline for hours, should we dismantle airlines? Is notoriously impossible to get google on the phone, should we scrap search engines and online advertising?
This post is simply looking for an reason to push a personal point.
In this instance, "customer service" is the entire point of licensing. You pay a fee and get the license. Here, Rossman paid his fee but didn't get his license because the government is inept.
That's not just bad customer service, that's this government agency failing to do the thing it was created for.
This is not a rational claim. Yes, you certainly can have the good without the bad. The existence of a process doesn't imply its brokenness.
If the payment was done, that shows intent on renewing the license. Might be worth nothing, might be worth something.
Do you think if the city sits on a permit renewal by Chase or Starbucks that they'll diligently sit and wait? Yeah, right...
If they still don't respond to a letter like that and it bounces back from the post office then you really have something for an attorney to start with. Attorneys are expensive - do the basics first before engaging one (if you have to).
And no, engaging an attorney does not automatically = a lawsuit. Quite the opposite, actually.
Edit: instead of silently voting me down too I encourage someone to provide thoughtful written discourse expressing your disagreement so we can all grow and learn together
And obviously, how much is it going to cost?
Some jobs in some places may have onerous requirements for some jobs, possibly for good reason, such as having a doctorate to perform medicine, which takes a decade of hard work or so. The bureaucracy involved may be simple, you're supposed to have the diploma: if you're found to have performed medical acts without it you end up in jail. (This is not typically how it's done any more for a number of good reasons, incidentally.)
Getting a simple piece of paper is the problem. As far as regulations are concerned, this is not any more complex than buying a concert ticket. If the festival you wanted to attend turned out to be unable to do that in a timely manner, you wouldn't fault them for selling tickets. You'd fault them for sucking at a simple business task.
To be frank, I don't see why Louis hasn't left new york / the east coast yet. I was unfortunate enough to move to NYC just in time for covid. I still enjoyed my time in New York but I really understand a lot of what Louis has been saying about the city itself. Subsequently I left. He clearly hates the business climate, makes weekly videos about how much NYC sucks. Maybe for his own health it's time to move to another state?
Looks like you were wrong, from the linked video (an hour ago):
> Thank you to everyone here who made a fuss, as I doubt I would've had someone on this case this quickly otherwise. The emails & calls I received this morning from the city made me feel like a customer at the Hilton... which I don't gotta tell you is NOT the way I usually feel when contacting NYC government bureaucracies.
Apparently dealing with the NYC government is like dealing with Google. When they screw up, your best bet is to complain loudly in public and hope your complaints go viral.
He's big enough now that yeah, he needs lawyers on retainer. Part of the video is to show just how insane cities are, and how they don't play by the rules if you don't litigate. This isn't how any of it is meant to work. If Louis is successful in his move, no doubt others will follow.
I don't believe NYC will ever become a "ghost town" but it certainly will look more like a pale grey image of brick and mortar where you just live in a box, go to the office, and repeat.
I'll miss my friends I made there, but prices are already going up and since I usually like to have side-gigs it's clear that NYC is going to make that difficult as well. I hate this because I did really like how easy it was to be social in NYC, even post covid. But idk, seems like an idiotic move given how shitty the trajectory still looks for the city.
I'm curious what you mean by this? Are you talking about gig-work side-gigs and the city is clamping down on that?
I have my personal biases but I actually think the trajectory for the city is pretty positive. All the people who didn't actually want to live here can work remote jobs elsewhere, making room for people who want to have a world-class arts/food/entertainment/etc. scene at their doorstep. I know people who have left since the pandemic and people who have moved here, both groups seem happier for the change.
And no, it's not obnoxious or self centered to say that if the NY government doesn't fix it's massive number of problems that bad things are going to happen. It seems pretty clear that's the case.
Poor cities can't systematically marginalize small business without hurting themselves enough to be held accountable so they don't generally do this kind of thing or when they do they fix the system quickly.
I will say, some of Louis' videos are a bit disingenuous, there are still some things open some of NYC still isn't that much of a shit-hole. Granted, even with all of this, there have been times where I've gone to meet people in Union Square park or grab dinner on the Upper West Side and I'm sad I can't do that anymore. It's weird.
Which goes to show, that NYC is truly the physical embodiment of a love hate relationship.
As long as New Yorkers still exist in their dense millions, service providers will always appear to fill a market need, even when they have to jump hoops (to a point). NYC knows this. China knows this.
It also encourages states to compete with each other, try new ideas and attract businesses; for e.g. Arizona and Southwest chip industry: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-southwest-is-americas-new-f...
Don't talk about the problem or the useless government employees will retaliate. How do we get rid of them?
This coule be part of his appeal to his followers. If he left NY, then he'd just be an outsider complaining on the internet about something he's no longer affects him. Plus, you can dislike the bizenv, but love other aspects of the area.
He mentions in the video that he's working on setting up another site, but he has employees in New York that don't want to move and he doesn't want to throw them under the bus by closing his New York location.
He's doing just fine. His youtube rankings are pretty "up there" for that genre of channel. There is no way to know how that compares to the repair shop, but I suspect it's at least a comparable income stream.
He makes 1st person videos of himself riding around Manhattan on his bike, free-associating and showing abandoned store-fronts BECAUSE it gets clicks-- otherwise it would be a waste of time. There's libertarian edge to it all. It looks like the commenters are heavily populated with red-state doom-scrollers rubber-necking at the "downfall" of NYC.
If Rossman would move out of NYC to somewhere else, he wouldn't have as much grist for the youtube channel, would he? He would have to go back to making strictly repair videos, loose his whole staff, and probably have less volume in his repair business as well.
I was in NYC for all of covid and can confirm that Fox News is full of it when it comes to "rampant crime in NYC" however it's not a perfectly rosy picture either in terms of the recovery of small business and character of the city.
NYS charged my previous, 2-person, zero employee agency a $14K fee for not having a Workers Comp policy, even though having one isn't necessary for member-managed businesses. We sent in paperwork demonstrating our case and they didn't care. They kept asking for more proof that we didn't have employees—even though they had no evidence that we did have them. A bit hard to prove a negative!
After several years of back and forth, we finally just said forget it, closed that entity, and started ignoring the monthly shakedown notices. Now I'm wary of even having clients in NYS.
[Edit: I've heard CA is similar, but don't have personal experience there.]
Have personal experience with CA. It's not at all the same. NYC is a nightmare to work with, but CA agencies are quite easy to work with. The only other jurisdiction as bad as NYC is the state of Hawaii.
Other than during the tax filing season I can reach a live human at a CA agency (except the DMV) within a few minutes just by calling. Representatives are very helpful over the phone, and I've resolved many issues for clients and my employer (now that I'm in-house) just by calling.
CA's bureaucracy looks complex, but it's actually very easy to navigate, and if you need help, there are a great many government employees who would be happy to help.
(no other verification, no info on the current status)
The fee isn't that much for California. I could see it as expensive if it was in a cheaper state. Also, if somebody is only making $20K annually running a cleaning service in California, they need to run it as a sole proprietorship, find another line of work, or move to a different state.
I made $15K in the late 1980s in California while living paycheck to paycheck. I don't see how anybody can live on $20K in 2021. This hypothetical person would make more money working at McDonald's.
(But I agree with you, and would file an LLC in DE or elsewhere, unless I plan on raising funding in which case it wouldn’t be an LLC but a DE C-Corp)
For a California resident trying to escape the expense, you are going to spend more money by creating your LLC in another state.
As someone not from the US, this aspect of the US has always amazed me. There is huge regulation on business at the state-level, particularly SMEs, but the US has a functioning economy somehow...do the rich just incorporate in Delaware? It is amazing to think that the US has succeeded in spite of significant efforts to fail. Introducing flat fees on business creation is tying a noose round your own neck economically.
This franchise tax is required by any type of business entity offering limited liability. Besides a limited liability company, this includes corporations, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships. You can avoid this fee if you have a sole proprietorship or general partnership. Additionally, non-profit corporations that have a tax-exemption from the IRS are also exempt from this fee.
My least favorite Mass. business experience this year was the complete fuckup with the Dept of Unemployment Assistance solvency fund. My DUA tax rate went from 2.5% to 7.5%. Frigging legislature and state government had no clue that this was coming, and left small businesses like mine swinging in the wind.
https://www.masslive.com/politics/2021/04/some-massachusetts...
But frankly this is nothing compared to doing business with the U.S. government through bids. Never, ever, ever attempting that again.
Don't you have to waive it in advance though?
Most sites gloss over these sorts of legal requirements.
I think what you get in places with limitless opportunity like NYC is the people attracted to government are either not able to cut it in a city like NYC (hence why government employees there are generally incompetent and indifferent) or see the immense wealth as something they can latch on to and exploit to satisfy their hunger for power over other people.
Met people who talk about greasing the wheel to get things done. But won’t say more.
For example, a store selling used equipment was fined for not individually labeling the equipment as used. All equipment in the store is used, it's all outdated stuff, and it's completely obvious. But one day someone from the city shows up and levies a fine. So now this scuffed, obsolete gear from the 1990s has a "used" sticker on it.
I used to work with a truck driver who knew how to properly grease the guys running the loading docks at the Javits center (slip a $20 into your paper work.) Though he said it only works with "older guys who've been around and know the game." That saved us 2-3 hours of waiting, we go into a dock right away, truckers watching us were pissed we skipped the line somehow. This was about 15 years ago though.
Though nowadays I hear those practices have mostly gone away. Of course we have no real way of knowing.
Waste management especially is mafia territory, if you don’t know the right people and make sure they get something out of your operation, you can count on getting shut down for breaking the same rules that every single one of your competitors also breaks.
Yes, and they are called "Expeditors" and "Expeditor Fees" and in some cases "Campaign Contributions". In real estate for example, "Expeditors" magically make all sorts of things happen, not happen, go away, by virtue of "Expeditors Fees"
1. Contact the local community board where the business is and try and speak during public hours during a meeting. Let them know the situation, point out how badly it's impacting business and see if they can reach out to their contacts to get a direct contact. Attendance and representation at these meetings skews heavily towards older wealthier people, so they likely have much more experience working within the system.
2. NYPD reps usually show up at CB meetings. After you speak, talk to one of the NYPD reps and get their info in front of everyone. If you go directly to the precinct there's practically a 0% chance anything productive will happen(especially because you can't legally record anything in a precinct anymore), but the reps they send to CB meetings have to look like they're doing something and will likely give you a card with their personal email and phone number. If you send an email to them about the situation, you'll have another form of documentation to put up, even if they do nothing to help directly.
3. Contact your local councilmember's office via phone. YMMV, but I was very surprised how receptive mine was to complaints I had and how quickly they were able to get some situations resolved after a few emails.
I have reached out to my representative (either local or federal) and have gotten meaningful responses and in several cases, they took action that successfully helped to resolve the issue (in one case, someone held in border detention, in the other case a local french preschool that was in threat of going out of business due to some fire code misunderstanding).
It's not a sure thing but it's has a good likelihood of results.
You almost cannot ever meaningfully sue them.
Almost all national governance has sovereign immunity, and only occasionally relinquishes a portion of it to physical damages.
Telling your wife and kids that you know they have friends and relationships and a school they are used to that they're moving a thousand miles within the next three weeks, and you're sure your kid's best friend or your teenager's boyfriend or your wife's book club will be fantastic penpals is quite another. And that isn't even touching on family ties.
I have a friend who moved to Portland recently. Ended up moving back three months later because his very young child couldn't handle not being able to spend time with his grandparents. People develop roots, and do not transplant easily on a timeframe measured in weeks.
Louis explains the exact reasons mentioned: some of his employees have families in NYC and he doesn't want to force them to move.
The implication is he's going to convert NYC to a remote shop, and move the main shop out pretty soon (likely to Florida). Employees can choose to stay or to be relocated to the new location.
To answer some common questions:
a) I have already emailed & called, and I patiently await a reply... b) You can't re-renew with a 13 month old PIN if you already renewed. c) You can't show up in person without an appointment. d) Appointments are only granted by means of contact that don't reply. e) Yes I have two other licenses that AREN'T expired, but those are useless, they are for selling laptops, not fixing laptops, which I don't do anymore anyway after the city was unable to give me a straight answer on how to do so without being fined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8_9WGk3Ok - I need this license in the video to be able to actually do repairs. f) Just listen to this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8_9WGk3Ok This is what I am dealing with. After 15+ minutes and being transferred to two people, they can't answer a basic question about a rule they fined me for breaking that they can't even explain. They never emailed or called me back, which has been the behavior I have come to expect over the past nine years.
I am serious, if you work for the city and have any way of applying my 13 month old payment to this license renewal, you have the gratitude of myself & 14 of my employees who will get to continue paying their rents, mortgages, & food bill for their kids.
In spite of what people think, I am not a millionaire. If I'm forced to close - I can't afford to pay these people. I do not want that to happen.
I am not meming, I never get responses to DCA emails - not 3 months ago, not for NINE YEARS, and I don't expect to be able to now. Since I cannot sort this out in person due to the COVID closures, this channel is my only hope of reaching someone who can help me sort this out.
Thank you.
The fact that they tax so aggressively and I've paid so much over the last several years living here really pisses me off. If you do need NY's state government help they are not there for you, and they don't care about you. But they'll gladly keep taking your money.
I unfortunately had to move back for a family issue but I can't wait to get out again. I think next time I might get some nice land in Wyoming, about as opposite NY as you can get.
Ignoring the government when they are being inaccurate always ends with you losing money, not them.
This seems like a problem for the private sector to solve. He should contact his local Chamber of Commerce - it's supposed to look out for business interests, after all, and for any given municipality, seems to have most of the town's politicians in its pocketbook.
A statement from the ACLU condemning NYs lack of action might get him the publicity to kick the city into action, though.
He purchased a license and sent him a response as a receipt. They have an obligation to send him his license or respond or both. That is quite clear. The NYC government doesn't have the right to discretionarily refuse to fulfill the services their residents directly pay them for.
Sure. The ACLU probably won't get involved, but the reason is not that the guy has no case. He clearly has a case.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/businesses/Doe...
It's likely that he doesn't even need to renew his license.
The vast bulk of civilization runs on business. Unless you’re content with North Korean living standards you need to make it possible for people to start, run and grow businesses. A society that fails on this point is just as fucked as one that can’t keep clean drinking water flowing or achieve basic literacy.
I just assumed that small-businesses aren't shut down en-masse because the flip-side to impossible red-tape is lax-enforcement.
I suppose that corporate retail establishments have lawyers retained to do this stuff. Are they doing something different?
Expediters are experts at navigating the city bureaucracy and getting whatever license or permit is required. They are most commonly used by developers and bars but can be useful for all sorts of businesses.
Is "navigate" just a euphemism for having a personal connection on the inside that you can get favors done by?
A necessary evil and often a lot cheaper than the whole lawyer route. Can be something as benign as someone who will go stand in line and do time consuming bureaucratic queuing on your behalf all the way to folks who have relationships within the bureaucracy and can get things flowing.
Folks from 3rd world nations understand this very well.
That being said, at this point throwing your hands up and saying "I don't know what to do, help me youtube" is the wrong way to handle this. I was going to make the suggestion about a lawyer, then I saw another poster had done so. The other route to go here is to reach out to your city council member. In NYC, there are enough city council members that they will respond to your request and someone will get back to you. They can make things happen, especially as it pertains to ridiculous bureaucracy.
In NYC, we also have a public advocate, whose job is literally to help smooth over disconnects between the public and nyc government agencies. They have a form right on their website where you can request help. Either of these approaches (or both!) would be more productive than complaining on youtube.
I'm done. Packing it up and getting out in 2 months.
New York is not dead last in recovery. It’s definitely in the top half of not better.
And to the extent the NYC economy has been damaged it’s entirely because NYC faced the brunt of COVID in the beginning snd because a larger part of its economy than many others is dependent on tourism and service industries that were most affected by Covid.
If you look at CNN's report, New York is doing the worst in every single metric where they compare states against each other: https://www.cnn.com/business/us-economic-recovery-coronaviru...
TOP Agency, who specialize in marketing data, put out this report putting NY second to last: https://topagency.com/report/pandemic-recovery/
Both get their data from different places and corroborate each others' findings.
I not only have data, but I live here and have been traveling the US all year. You can see this plainly with your eyeballs. The state of NY's economy is complete shit.
It will also get resolved and/or not matter (in that once things return a bit to normal any accrued fines/fees will be forgiven). But in the meanwhile it provides Louis, whose YT channel no longer resembles the educational/right to repair focused channel it used to be, but rather dependent on views from whining about different stuff, more fodder for views.
Yea, I'd say an hour is too much.
And don't get me started on the local USPS.
I'd be fascinated to see a journalist's investigation into why this took Louis needing to go to the internet for something essentially quite trivial. And yes, granting licenses should be regular, boring, routine paperwork.
As he rightfully says, the process should be the same for other small businesses that don’t have 1.59m YouTube subscribers.
I used to have a California LLC. As a side note, if you were unable (forced) to operate your business due to Covid restrictions, California made no exceptions for the $800 LLC fees. It’s outrageous.
I just setup a company where it will take a few years to build something in Ohio. It's $99 once and no annual fees. Zero dollars a year.
From my non legal perspective, if you aren't yet generating revenues it pays to incorporate outside of California.
Whoever downvoted the comment (at the time of me writing this) above - can you add a comment why? This seems like a reasonable comment.
I see more and more reasonable comments simply being downvoted, with no reasons or counter-point provided, which is not helpful.
1. Assuming your business is going to employ anyone at all, $800 is only 1-2 weeks of pay even at minimum wage.
2. I am not aware of any type of business California has forced to shut down completely (i.e. literally no way of making money) for the entire year.
3. If this business is just a side project you're trying out on top of your main job and it fails, you can disband it within 1 year of creation and are exempt from the fee (Source: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/types/limited-liability... - See section "Short form cancellation").
We could argue about whether it discourages starting small business in California, or if the CA government should have waived the fee this year to help with COVID-19; but acting like this is some insane requirement that is killing small businesses is ridiculous. Business that cannot afford this fee are already failing and almost certainly can't even afford to pay their employees. (For the record, I find it to be a pretty regressive tax, and should just be reduced to whatever overhead exists for managing LLC filings.)
My only option is to use an out of state LLC, for which California gets less than nothing - not only do they not get my fee, but they get less reporting and regulatory control as well.
It’s like Round Up, except for business!
The problem apparently is that the NYC has a department called the DCA, where you can't do anything without directly interacting with _people_ in the DCA, and the DCA refuses to interact with people.
People are quoting Rossman’s YT comment but it is predicated on you knowing what his actual complaint is.
sorry poster, but i’m not going to watch minutes of a random youtube video from a random account to decide if this is interesting or just more youtube outragePorn for the outrage addicts.
Or to put it bluntly: if he can't take the time to streamline his message then I don't have the time to listen to all of it just in case it gets interesting at some point.
v;dw
The current video is about the incompetence/malevolence of NYC DCA.
Law Enforcement Agencies Data System
In Ohio, it's operated by the Ohio State Highway Patrol. I know that Chicago has their own LEADS implementation. Wouldn't surprise me if NYC has their own.
As a pawn shop owner, I have to submit the same records.
I have lived for a long time in a country where insane bureaucracy and corruption are the norm. Probably up there with some of the worst on this planet. I've also seen quite a bit of what happens behind the scenes, from relationships with what someone might call the more privileged section of society. One thing I can say with a high degree of certainty from those experiences (no, I won't talk details): there usually are strong connections between the interests of powerful corporations/entities and insane bureaucracy and corruption, whenever the latter two exist. Even if they might not be directly the source or reasons for the existence of the latter, powerful corporations certainly know how to use their influence to maintain a dysfunctional status quo and use it to their advantage wherever they see an opportunity for it.
While NYC bureaucracy no doubt exists for other reasons, it does not rule out there be something else going on here as well. Not a chance in hell anyone but a whistle-blower could ever prove that though. But that's exactly why it's so tempting for powerful entities to nurture and support corrupt/dysfunctional systems (as for them they work just fine, if not better).
I can not speak for NYC (or anywhere inside the USA for that matter), but I have seen powerful entities work officials so that the function of governments would not improve.
Of course, every American is free to believe no such things ever would take place in the USA .. however, that would certainly make the country exceptional (for a change), compared to how things works pretty much everywhere else on the planet.