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Comment by msrenee | Hacker News Reader

I'm missing the logic of the second 10k. He had already exceeded the limit. Why did he think that doing it again would change the outcome?

It looks to me like he was going to get the extra $25 returned to him and have 10k in bonds. It's definitely vague though.

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They assumed the government's software would do this:

(1) Purchase #1 for $25 successful --> reduce remaining limit from $10000 to $9975.

(2) Purchase #2 for $10000 rejected and refund pending --> DO NOT reduce limit since you know the purchase didn't go through.

(3) Purchase #3 for $9975 within limit --> allow purchase, reduce limit to exactly $0.

Instead, at step 2, the software seems to handle the purchase by unconditionally taking $10000 off the limit at purchase time and putting $10000 back later when the refund is processed. (And consequently, at step 3, it failed the purchase.)

There isn't an obvious reason to do it this way, so it's surprising. It seems like if you can reduce the limit, you can check if you've exceeded it and just fail the purchase and never modify the limit (at purchase or refund time).

The email clearly says that the excess purchase will be refunded. He lost me here; I was mystified when he decided to purchase another $9975.

If I have a $10K credit limit, I charge $9975 and then I pay $9975, my credit limit is automatically increased back to $10K before the payment goes through.

She didn’t have a completely incorrect mental model. But the credit card company is being a lot more lenient than the government is being and the government should be more strict.

Oh, I think the email is ambiguous! I had a totally different interpretation, although I absolutely see yours now.

I interpreted "refund of the excess purchase" to mean that it is a refund of the whole purchase. If it were a partial refund, they could have just written "refund of the excess".

By adding "purchase", they made it sound to me like there are two categories of purchases (excess and non-excess) and that this purchase belongs to the excess category. That is, I saw "excess" as an adjective that says why the refund is happening, not how much is being refunded.

The more I analyze the wording, the less I'm sure which interpretation is right.

Me too! My interpretation was obvious to me at first, but after reading your comments and others I can easily see it the other way. I still think my interpretation is more natural, but there’s no question that they should have been less ambiguous. How easy it would have been to use a few more words for more clarity. Also, ideally, the actual amounts in question should have been spelled out in the email.

Wait a second, does that mean that his original plan to invest $10k, after the excess refund, was accomplished?

The last statement of the post mentions how he will not get any return. But he's only going to be refunded the excess.

So ultimately, did he, or will he still make his $850, as initially intended?

The author is invested, but there is some question about whether he or she has realized that.

I expect the logic for allowing a transaction looks at all 'purchases', including the current one, and sees if the total is over 10,000. If it is, throw an error, send an automated email, and let a human deal with reversing the transaction when they see what happened in the error log.

Exactly, this!

They thought they exceeded the limit by trying to send $10000+$25, so given that the $10000 was coming back, they expected that they're again $9975 under the limit.

That's an odd interpretation of the refund. The email clearly states,

> "A refund of the excess purchase..."

So they'd be refunded the excess, i.e. $25.

Putting another $9,975 through just feels like being "too smart".

You could interpret the "excess purchase" as the excess amount (so $25 refund) or as the excess purchase transaction (so $10000 refund).

A purchase is a well defined noun, and this thing's UI was written by a lawyer that's paid to interpret US tax code.

I'm 90% sure the author will end up with a $25 bond. There's a 10% chance it won't actually cancel the $9975 purchase, due to races between the probably bolted on email part and the thing that reconciles all the transactions by scanning their (emulated?) tape drive at night.

Either way, it's pretty clearly a bug in the server implementation (unless this behavior is accidentally required by law, which wouldn't surprise me either...)

I found that ambiguous, could either read it as the excess amount or the entirety of the purchase that resulted in excess balance.

But anyway it just shows more UX issues - if it's the former then why didn't the balance update to show $10k; in either case why does it accept the payment before checking? It should just say no you've hit your limit this year, or you've already subscribed $25 this year you're limit is $9975.

It is probably backed by some old mainframe system and done in batches. Earlier the post told it took couple days for 25$ to show up.

So it is not real time system, but likely processed weekly, monthly or like. And all of the messes are bunched up and processed for single out come for period of time.

User was just stupid not to wait a week before next attempt...

Why do they take the money before checking if they should take the money?

If they waited a week they wouldn’t get the 8.5% (I believe)

The email of over payment seems to be dated 13th of April so there should have been some time left in that month. At least I think it is tied to month and not certain date in a month.

Oh… gotcha. Yeah shoulda waited.

'Cannot make further subscription while one is pending, try again later' then.

But I don't see why you can't just record '25' even if it won't settle for days/weeks, and not allow >$9975 in the meantime. (If the $25 doesn't go through then fine, you just end up with $25 capacity still.)

I bet it allows you to make a single >$10k payment only to reject it (on an 8-10week time frame) if it behaves like this.

I wouldn't be surprised if the process is intertwined with a paper one as well. That adds significant complication, but it still shouldn't take it.

Missed the edit window, but I can't leave that - I meant 'your limit', of course. I blame Android keyboard.

It’s bad English. The unambiguous terminology would be simply “excess” or “excess part of the purchase”. The term “excess purchase” sounds like the entire purchase is excess i.e. the adjective “excess” is modifying the noun “purchase” [the purchase was excess]. But they intended it as a noun adjunct where the noun “purchase” is modifying the noun “excess” [the excess was a purchase]. But this parse is not at all preferably taken syntactically, only the semantics clue you into it.

Very sloppy for a consumer financial communication, but I guess that governments can get away with it.

They could purchase up to $10k in bonds. They exceeded that by $25 dollars. Each dollar or penny or half-penny is a separate portion of a bond in my mind, although I don't know how that works legally. So the excess purchase would be the $25 he was in excess of the maximum purchase. Just the way I interpreted it, but by no means the legal or actual way it's handled.

Parent is correct however. "Excess" or "excess amount" would be clear. "Excess purchase" is confusing.

Imagine if the email had just said "excess part of the purchase: $25". No way thy would've made that mistake.

I can see the logic.

Is there no way to purchase these bonds besides this website?

The only other way is via your annual tax return.

That certainly is a pain.

You can purchase government debt via tax returns? How does that make sense? I've never heard of anything like that in other countries.

He didn't understand the email, and thought that buying the bonds wasn't successful.

At the end, it's clear that he still thinks that, rather than that he has 10K in I bonds and 10K to be refunded, which seems more consistent with the language and events.

Yeah, I noticed that too

His 10k bonds should be there, they will refund the excess, not the whole thing

Still leaves them with $200, waiting for the erroneous $10k to be returned.

The author's reading comprehension may leave something to be desired, but so does the interface they were using.

Actually, only the second transaction's rejection is good evidence that the author's interpretation is wrong! The wording of the interface is definitely pretty terrible.

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