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Comment by naet | Hacker News Reader

The part where someone waits for a super long time in a queue, finally gets connected, but then gets sent to an answering machine that says "the mailbox is full" hit too close to home. I know this was set up on purpose but I've had that exact same thing happen to me on a real & important government system recently.

I've been trying to call California EDD to get some back pay for my state paid family leave. There is no option to get what I need online, I need to call in. I've had that exact thing happen twice after an hour of waiting in the queue... phone rings, goes to voicemail, full mailbox, line gets disconnected. And I have about a 1/100 rate of even getting a chance to join the queue when I call; usually I hear that the queue is too full to join at all. It's absolutely maddening and I may never get my PFL paid out properly.

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FWIW, when I had to get in touch with EDD several years ago and had absolutely no luck calling the main number, I eventually got through with the foreign language numbers. They’re generally staffed higher in proportion to the number of callers they get. IIRC, Vietnamese was the one with the best ratio, though that may have changed in the years since I looked into it.

It can be tricky to make it through the automated menus if you don’t speak the language (though I’m sure you’ve memorized the sequence by now), but once you get to a human, they’re bilingual and completely fluent in English.

Google's Translate app on a phone may help but not all languages accept audio input.

Usually, the foreign language number staff speak English as well.

Best hack I’ve read on this site in quite a while!

Huh, nice trick! Likewise some companies make it difficult (deliberately? surely not!) to get through to their tech support and warranty lines, but their sales number is always answered instantly and sometimes their sales staff can transfer you directly to the right person. Another handy hint for automated phone menus is to just spam # nonstop, usually after about 10-20 presses the menu software will give up and patch you through to a human.

Calling comcast customer support almost guarantees this happens. You call in, repeatedly ask for a representative, they will hang up on you. The only way I've reliably been able to talk to anyone to say you wish to 'Talk to a representative about cancelling my account'.

TBH, I kind of dread when they start incorporating LLMs or better ai, because it will be truly impossible to speak to a human anymore.

> The only way I've reliably been able to talk to anyone to say you wish to 'Talk to a representative about cancelling my account'.

Threatening to leave is also a reliable technique to stop ridiculous price hikes and even get hefty discounts.

Sometimes you have to talk to someone on the "retention team." At other times you can do it online. Most recently I preserved the NYT intro rate of $4 every 4 weeks (instead of $25) and I got a 33% discount on an Adobe subscription after they announced a 50% price hike and I started the cancellation process.

You have to accept that they might actually cancel the account, and deal with the inconvenience of actually switching (which may be worth it anyway).

Not really you can usually back out before finally pulling the trigger.

I tried that bluff with a cable company once and they put me on hold for a bit, I thought it was to transfer me to retention department so I can get a sweet discount. Then the rep comes back on and said “Ok I canceled your account. Anything else i can do?”

Yeah this does occasionally happen. Had it happen with a credit card that had hiked their annual fee or something like that. Best to be prepared with a backup service or be OK doing without.

I’ve had good luck not specifically saying “I want to cancel” but something along the lines of “I’m thinking about cancelling, the price is just too high” but that doesn’t always get you the very best offers.

My uncle calls up all his service providers at least twice a year and threatens to cancel just to see what they offer him. It's had a very positive ROI.

I'm surprised they haven't caught on yet, sounds like all it would take would be a note on his account, this is a fairly well known strategy.

Maybe he follows through with it if he doesn't like the offer. Systematic threats don't have to be empty.

Comcast specifically though throttled the retention policies for Sky Italia when they bought them, it used to be that you could get a 60% discount easily, after their purchase it became at most 40% if I remember well

> TBH, I kind of dread when they start incorporating LLMs or better ai, because it will be truly impossible to speak to a human anymore.

I think my bank did that as the experience looked far from the usual chat bot. I just had to say "you cannot help me I need to talk to a human".

For the literal 98% of the world who don't know these acronyms:

EDD: Employment Development Department, appears to be some sort of job seeker assistance group? PFL: Paid Family Leave - Maternity/Paternity or carer style leave.

It’s support for people who are unemployed/on leave.

It is a state-run department that provides various services related to employment such as unemployment benefits, career development, job coaching, networking, job classes, certifications & additional services for people with disabilities.

Thank you.

- sincerely, a European

Sorry yes, California EDD is the California state government agency/department you mentioned.

They manage payments and benefits for unemployment, disability, and Paid Family Leave (PFL), the last of which is paid time off from work you can take when you have a new baby. I think they also manage some statistics and data around employment disability etc.

PFL in California guarantees the state will pay you something like 70-80% of your typical wages, for up to 8 weeks, while you take time off to bond with and care for your baby.

There is no guaranteed paid paternity or maternity time in the USA so I am lucky to live in a state that offers this. You may view this program as either generous or paltry compared to your own countries offerings.

Yes, that is paltry compared to most countries offerings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

Thank you for clarifying though.

Regarding your issues with CA EDD: Call the office of your California state assembly representative and ask for their help.

Thanks for the tip, I will definitely try that as an alternative option. I just looked up who mine was, and they had a section on their website about requesting help with EDD, so it must be something that they hear about often.

I basically gave up on calling EDD directly as it's just not possible to get through. I did get through to somebody once, in probably over 200 calls, and multiple hour long holds, and it's just not feasible to keep trying to make this with my work and my family and everything. You need to make it a full time job if you want to go through that channel.

this might not be worth it, depending on where you live, but EDD has physical offices. Where, infuriatingly, you also cannot talk to a real person. they have banks of phones you can pick up and it will dial you in to their call system. I had a family member that tried this and it seemed to fast track him to talking to a real person. My experience with EDD is that you just need to get filed into their system. they will eventually get to it whether it is an appeal or request or whatever, they take months to get back to you, but they do. even if it is because they owe you money.

I feel for you about EDD. They still owe us several thousand dollars in unemployment due to a pandemic layoff but I gave up on it after a similar experience to what you’re describing.

Have you tried sending paper mail? Usually you just need a position in the pile.

Calling EDD at 7:00:00 AM, the second they open, will usually get your call answered. Or it may be 8:00 I forget... If you call too early you'll get a message telling you so.

Also take note of the menu options you need to select so when you call back you can bypass all the blah, blah, blah in most cases.

I've called exactly at opening many times (8:00 am currently), and called back over and over in the morning, even still rarely get in the call queue. Not sure how many people can be waiting but it's almost always instantly full.

That is the only way I've ever gotten in the queue so far though, calling multiple times right at opening hour. And then once in the queue I see the issue above re: no answer / mailbox is full after waiting on hold for ages for my turn.

I also have a thing on my phone that automatically pushes the right buttons as fast as possible to navigate to the extension I need (for a more efficient rejection).

> I also have a thing on my phone that automatically pushes the right buttons as fast as possible to navigate to the extension I need (for a more efficient rejection).

Pushing buttons slowly might work better if fast doesn't work.

I've had this happen to me with a bank before! It was nuts. Eventually I DM'd their twitter account and got the customer service I needed.

The worst is that there are multiple startups that offer a "call back" service.

I mean the actual worst is having the 4th highest tax burden in the nation and having a dysfunctional EDD that can’t efficiently give unemployment to people who need it.

Can you post them a letter?

As a generally left leaning government trusting Silicon Valley tech bro, the California PFL nightmare has been so awful it has been enough to at least instill thoughts of moving to live off grid in Idaho and starting an anti government … group

Wanting a large government and wanting a government to work well are not mutually exclusive. The worst thing about dealing with EDD is that no matter how poorly run their services are and no matter how much the staff are uselessly unhelpful, they all still have jobs and you don’t. It is a really unpleasant way to spend the day after your company announces that you and everyone else no longer have jobs there.

Call your senator

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