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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

I’ll share my story. The IRS incorrectly sent me a fine for over a thousand dollars claiming I had filed late. I tried calling them 9 times on different days to dispute it. Within a minute of opening, end of day, middle of the day, didn’t matter. Not even a wait line, just “sorry try later.” I finally gave up and paid the damn thing then got a refund for the fine over a year later when I guess they figured out it was invalid.

The IRS is one place I absolutely want my tax dollars to fund and it’s sad to see it get cut to the bone.

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If you are an American citizen, just call your US representative. They will have you on the phone with an actual person at the IRS in a day or two.

Literally, I've learned this lesson the hard way. The moment I have to wait more than an hour or so to figure out a government service or agency, I immediately lodge a formal complaint with my representative. They have a large staff dedicated to constituent services, and they have internal connections. They also follow up, and if the agency isn't doing well, they track it.

I've literally been begged by federal agents to leave good reviews with the congressman in order that they don't get their budget cuts. It's a welcome change of pace to be speaking with an agent that wants to help me.

As an example, my son's name was mis-spelled on the birth certificate and thus social security card. We waited for three hours in an SSA office to change it but the woman did not want to help us at all, and insinuated we were committing fraud.

I had it. I called my US representative and my two Senators and e-mailed them a full portfolio of the details. Within a day, I had their office calling me with a special SSA representative on the line. They were able to make me an actual appointment for next day service at the local SSA office speaking to a much more intelligent SSA agent, who was so friendly and helpful, it was almost unbearable. The best part was, I didn't have to even wait in line or at the front desk. She took my materials, told me she will personally investigate and get back to me. Within a day, she called me back, had everything figured out and had completed several steps of the process for me.

In sum, never deal with the agencies if it's becoming antagonistic. Contact your representative. It is literally their job.

This assumes that the Representative is competent, and believes that they act for the good of all people in their district, not just the ones who believe in their version of God. This not true across the country, and particularly, not in the district that I live in. I would never call my Representative. My Senators, not too bad, but there are only 2 of them for the entire state.

The politicians don’t personally do it. You won’t talk to the actual rep, you’ll talk to some recent poli-sci grad or intern or whatever.

I suppose some might be so incredibly bad at their job that they don’t have staff for constituent services, but most do. They don’t tend to ask who you voted for before helping. I’m in a very red state, vote for democrats, and have had state and federal republican rep offices help me out several times.

I'm not 100% sure of the specifics, but I'm pretty sure you get a professional on the phone at the end of the day, not your representative. The incentives are just properly aligned.

I am a very conservative person, but I've lived in deep red districts and deep blue ones, and I've honestly never had a problem with any. If anything, I've noticed that the representatives I complain to a lot want to help more because they think they can get another voter by simply being decent. That's if the rep even gets involved.

You might be surprised. I don't have any direct experience to speak of, but I've heard that some reps whose rhetoric would make you think they want tens of millions of Americans imprisoned, deported, or dead turn out to have surprisingly good staffers handling constituent services.

> have surprisingly good staffers

This is it. Calling your representative almost never results in you actually directly communicating with your representative (for better or worse). You will always get their staffers, who may have completely different moral and political agendas.

I shouldn't have to explain why this isn't a viable long-term solution, right?

Another perspective: The reality is that not all customer service is created equal, and for the individual, escalating through side channels is simply taking advantage of the system as designed.

> Much like the United States has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that caseworkers for immigration and passport services should be staffed in every Congressman’s office and not at the agency that actually handles immigration or passport issuance, there very likely exist people at the bank whose job is working the bank more than it is working for the bank.

> As a sophisticated user of the banking system, a useful skill to have is understanding whether the ultimate solution to an issue facing you is probably available to Tier Two or probably only available to a professional earning six figures a year. You can then route your queries to the bank to get in front of the appropriate person with the minimal amount of effort expended on making this happen.

> You might think bank would hate this, and aggressively direct people who discover side channels to Use The 1-800 Number That Is What It Is For. For better or worse, the side channels are not an accident. They are extremely intentionally designed. Accessing them often requires performance of being a professional-managerial class member or otherwise knowing some financial industry shibboleths. This is not accidental; that greatly cuts down on “misuse” of the side channels by that guy.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/

Why not? Things get escalated to one superior, then the next, then the next, until finally someone who can take care of the problem. Of course, going from the lowest level directly to the highest level is a bad idea, but there is some middle ground.

So historically, all business with the feds were done via your representative. It's fairly new that there's a bureaucracy for everything.

It seems like they had some sort of software/oversight issue, in addition to inadequate filer service. Why do you believe that giving them more money will cause them to improve? This seems like some sort of Stockholm syndrome.

Because scaling up linearly is relatively straight-forwards. If the problem is a shortage of people answering the phone, you hire more people to answer the phones. If you don't have the money to hire more people, you don't get more people, which means you don't have more people. When you don't have more people, you have a shortage of people answering the phones.

It's not rocket science.

I have no idea why paying them less (which, not-increasing is the same as, given increase in population and inflation) would make them do better. Are they a petulant child and we're trying to "teach them a lesson"?

I had a similar issue where they claimed I didn’t pay one year. Calling led nowhere but my CPA friend said send them a letter. As in a physical snail mail dispute letter. I could be wrong but I think they have to reply within a certain amount of time even if the reply is “we’re still looking into it”. 6 months later I got a letter saying basically I was correct and you don’t owe anything.

You should be happy that Biden and Democrats allocated $60 billion to the IRS then. It was $80 billion until Republicans extracted a $20 billion decrease in negotiations.

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