Smells Like Grift

A few weeks ago, I got a letter congratulating me on qualifying for a stimulus check. The letter further stated that if I'd filed electronically, I'd get the funds direct deposited. Since I'm still fully employed and wasn't in need of the stimulus, I didn't think much about it till last week. None of my bank accounts seemed to be surplused by the amount specified in the letter. So, I did a quick search of my accounts and found no deposits in any of them - even having checked as far back as the first of the month prior to the letter.

So, I hit the IRS check-tracking site. After entering my info, it told me an electronic payment shoould have shown up during the second half of May and to doublecheck with my bank before filing a trace-request. I double-checked and, as before, no evidence of a deposit from the IRS.

I returned to the IRS site to see what I should do. I found the steps for filing a trace. The site told me to call an 800 number. I called the 800 number where, after holding for half an hour, the person that answered my call told me that the staff answering that number don't actually have the power to initiate a trace. I instead had to call a different number – a non toll-free number. Of course, this made me wonder "why the fuck is the IRS.Gov website saying to call the 800 number rather than the number I had to get from that 800 number after the long hold??"

At any rate, I called the number. SEVERAL TIMES. Each of the first few times, the number rang, I got a message saying the call was being transferred, heard what sounded like touch-tone numbers being auto-punched ...and then dead silence. Not a summary hangup, simply dead silence. I tried a half dozen or so times, last week, each time the same as the first. With my last failure, Friday, I decided, "I'll try once more on Monday morning. If that fails, I'll re-try the 800 number and see if there's a different number to call."

This morning, instead of getting the rerouting message, I got a "estimated hold time is 30-60 minutes" message and placed in a hold-queue with not entirely insanity-inducing hold-music. At the 62-minute mark, I got a message saying the call was being transferred to a representative ...followed by what sounded like touch-tone numbers being auto-punched ...and then dead silence.

Vexed, I called the original 800 number back. Waited 15 minutes for a human to pick up. I explained why I was calling a number I knew didn't have the power to help me track my payment (and that the website said it WAS the number I needed to call). The agent told me he'd try to transfer me to the group that did have the power to do the tracing. I heard a few clicks and got transferred to a hold-queue. A hold-queue that started by telling me the current hold time was in excess of 60 minutes ...followed by the same hold music I'd already listened to for 62 minutes, today.

I set my phone to speaker mode and continued about my day's work. At about the 95 minute mark, a message saying I was being transferred, followed by what sounded like touch-tone numbers being auto-punched. This time, however, I actually got a human. She asked me for my info. She then did a quick search and tells me, "you were sent a debit card". I was a skosh incredulous given that the IRS.Gov site had said I should have received a direct deposit  – I stated as much to her, further informing her that I've been electronically filing my taxes for well more than a decade and that, prior to Trump's tax "cut" receiving my refunds via direct deposit (since the "cut", I've been electronically paying my taxes from the same accounts that the refunds were direct-deposited to). She told me to wait while she re-verified. A few seconds passed and she verified that I would have been mailed a debit card.

She then told me that the letter would have looked like junk-mail. In my head, I silently railed, "who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make these things look like junk-mail???". She also informed me that I would have to contact the card-issuer to get a new card issued. Apparently, the IRS distributed the fund by way of a commercial provider.

So, yeah, $560Bn+ was given to a corporation to distrubute. A corporation that, no doubt, is both getting a contracted-rate for administering the distribution of funds and I imagine they were given a lump-sum to distribute and are getting investment income from every dollar that they can hold onto before recipients use the last few cents of the debit card. Similarly, if a card gets "lost in the mail", then "replacement fees may apply".

And, I get that they're trying to get people to spend the money rather than throw it into savings. But forcing me to take the funds by way of  a debit card when I (fortunately) don't have any urgent expenses is just dicktacular. The whole thing smells like it was architected to line the pockets of the stimulus-distributor – probably a Trump cronie – rather than get useful money into people's hands.

Further, as someone not exactly currently in a position of need, sending me a payment now, rather than if/when I might actually need it just seems really piss-poor. These one-time, lump-sum things rather than a proper social safety-net programs don't really encourage people to spend: knowing that you'll still have money (for food and shelter) tomorrow is a better way to ensure that people will spend today (in a way that keeps the economy humming).