Letter Adventure: Episode I
Or perhaps ‘Post Office of the Brain Dead,’ or ‘IRS of the Brain Dead.’ But read on and compose your own appropriate title.
My mailing address is not; 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 56789. It’s not, but let’s just pretend that it is.
Yesterday I received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. The letter was mailed to me, successfully, at 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 56789.
The letter informed me that the IRS had attempted to mail me my Federal Income Tax Refund check at the address 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 56789. However, the United States Postal Service informed them that the check was undeliverable at 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 56789 and consequently the check has been returned to the IRS.
Now at this point the story is merely about the USPS, who have proven themselves unable to deliver a piece of mail to me at the address wherein I have resided for several decades. An address to which they appear to have no difficulty delivering all sorts of other mail, which while they do not contain checks for me still have my same name and address on the envelope containing the check from the IRS. What is the Post Office thinking?
However, the IRS, now figuratively if not literally, holding my returned check in their collective hands, decided to contact me in order to notify me of the problem. Remember, the silly Post Office says that the address 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 56789 is undeliverable. So rather than phoning me, the IRS has my phone number, or emailing me, they also have my email address, they mailed me a letter informing me of the problem. They sent a letter to 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 56789 informing me that my check mailed to 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 56789 was returned as undeliverable, and what would I like them to do about it. What is the IRS thinking? I mean, if the mailing address doesn’t work for the first item of mail, the check, then why would it work for the second item of mail, the letter informing me that the check was undeliverable. This makes the IRS look pretty silly, and by that I mean sillier than the Post Office. So that’s pretty darned silly.
On the other hand, the reason I’m ranting on this subject is because the second letter was successfully delivered to me yesterday. So I guess that’s back to making the Post Office look silly. I mean it’s the same address, what could be the difference that made the first envelope undeliverable? The weight of the envelope? The color of the envelope? The size of the chip on my letter carrier’s shoulder?
So I phoned the IRS to see what could be done about the problem. The computerized phone messaging menu wasn’t too complex, and the music on hold wasn’t too obnoxious. Too loud, but not too obnoxious. And it only took a half hour for a human to come on the line to help me. The automated computer voice told me that the wait time would be only 10 minutes, and I timed it at 30 minutes, but still that might be pretty fast for the IRS. And, unlike any other customer service phone bank to which I’ve spoken, the IRS representative insisted that I call him ‘Mr. Smith’ rather than his first name. But aside from that, he seemed pretty helpful. Well, he did keep demanding to know which tax form I’d used. I didn’t know the answer to that, so he said that he couldn’t help me unless I told him which form I’d used. We went round and round for a bit. I kept telling him about the letter, and he kept demanding to know which tax form had been used to pay the taxes for which I now had a question. Eventually I asked him if the number of the tax form would be on the letter I was holding, and he said, “Sure. What’s the number of the letter that you’re holding.” I told him that it was CP31, and he told me where to look for the number of the tax form, and once I’d told him that, then he asked me what letter I’d received. I told him CP31, again, and he was ready to help me.
Then we spent around 20 minutes discussing the letter/check problem. It took me a while to get through that I didn’t understand why a check couldn’t reach me at 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 5678, but a letter could reach me at 1234 Elm St. Hollywood USA 5678. Eventually he admitted that this did seem a bit weird. Then he asked if I could just receive my refund check at my business address. I informed him that I had a home office, with the same address as my home address. Then he asked if I could have my refund check sent to my wife instead of me. I informed him that I wasn’t married, and then asked if I had been married wouldn’t my wife’s mailing address be the same as mine, I mean if we were married and living together. He said “Hmm” and explained that he was just trying to “Think outside the box.”
So eventually he decided to just ‘Release the check’ again and mail it to the same address, which hadn’t worked the first time, but maybe it would work this time. I asked him what we would do if the check was returned a second time, and he said, “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
Then he asked me if there was anything else he could do to help me, and when I said “No” he said a polite goodbye and hung up.
It really is the Post Office’s fault, but somehow the IRS managed to make the USPS look better.