WTF Is Wrong With Lazy, Incompetent People?

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

Ok, so my wife and I have been receiving postcards from the dealership where she purchased her last car for going on a decade now for a "recall" (spoiler tag at the end about why that's in quotes).  We ignored them and threw them in the trash when they arrived due to how long it would take to get the "service" done and how laughably, ridiculously little the dealership would be doing, which wouldn't solve any problems that we had with the car to begin with.

So, around the beginning of the pandemic, that car suddenly decided that it not only wouldn't start, but wouldn't even crank.  The starter was good, it wasn't the "security" system in the car, as there was no security light flashing, re-learning/re-pairing the cylinder did no good, and even starting the car directly from the starter would only cause the car to start momentarily before something in the computer went "nope, we didn't tell it to run" and cut off fuel.  The car sat for a year while my brother and I tried different ideas until one day, out of the blue, it just started, and I drove it home.  The next time I went to start it, it was "dead" again (all electronics working, but no crank with the key), so we decided to get rid of it, with it ultimately coming to reside as a 3' cube at the local junkyard.

Cue the dealership warranty people, who promptly sent another "recall" notice that showed up a day or two after.  Staying in habit, I threw it away.  And then, a week ago, we get another notice for the same recall.  I show it to @Rhapsody98, kind of laughing, kind of annoyed, and set it aside with the mail.  A day or two ago, I thought I would take care of it, then realized that they wouldn't talk to me, as I'm not the registered owner, so I set it aside again until this morning.  As the wife had the morning off, we spent time together, chased after our daughter, and eventually I cam across the notice when looking for something else.

"Hey, why don't you call these people and see if you can end these?  It's in your name, so they won't talk to me."

'Ok.'

And so she calls.  She introduces herself, describes what's on the card, and asks what needs to be done to get off of their mailing list, because she no longer owns the car.  I can't understand what the people on the phone are saying, but can hear that there's a brief silence, then my wife saying, "Ok," then more brief silence, meaning a transfer, then my wife repeating the mantra she just went through.  Only, she discovers that she's been transferred to someone who's telling her it's the wrong department, and they can't help her.  "Ok, that's fine, could you please tell me who I need to speak to in order to get this taken care of?"  Quick silence, then something quick.  "Ok, could you transfer me?"  Person on the other end replies.  "No problem, could I get the number to those people?"  Person on the other end replies.  "O...kay.  So, the same people who sent me over here."

So, she hangs up, redials, and doesn't get a chance to say anything before the person answering says, "I'll transfer you to Service."  Which is, once again, not the people who are supposed to take care of this.  So Service transfers her back to the main number, who then guesses that "Internet Sales" would be the group to help her and promptly passes the buck again, without delay.  "Internet Sales" answers, listens patiently to my wife's now-practiced speech and promptly responds with "You need Service, we can't help you," to which my wife calmly repeats the fact that she doesn't need service, she needs off the mailing list and then emphasizes that Service was the group that just transferred her over and said that "Internet Sales" would be the ones to get the job done.  After all of this, the person on the line finally says, "Oh, really?  Ok, I'll get it done then," and seemingly immediately disconnects the call.  I guess we'll see how that goes, as we didn't get any definitive notice that it was done, and nobody seemed to have any clue what to do to take care of the issue.

Seriously...what the actual F is wrong with people these days?  No warm transfer, no attempt to really try to understand the issue, just, "Nope, not my problem, off you go."  I get that it's a local dealership and not a call center, so I imagine the metrics are somewhat different when those folks are being evaluated on their performance, but that type of crap is exactly what gets you warned, and eventually walked out the door at a call center if you do it often enough.

Spoiler

I put "recall" in quotes, because the issue they were recalling was the hole for the keyring at the back of the key going all the way across the width of the key, and in some cases, where people had a lot of keys on their keyring, the other keys would swing around while driving and cause the ignition to physically turn off.  Their solution to all this?  Put foam spacers on either side of the slot for the keyring in each key for the car so that the ring couldn't slide around.  You can imagine exactly how long this "fix" would take to actually perform, but the dealership guaranteed you'd be there 3-4 hours, so we just never bothered, as we never had that issue.

 

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

As someone who worked in the service department of a Car dealership for 10 years, I lol’d at you throwing away a recall notice.
 

Those are required to be performed, regardless of what time it takes. Recalls are very expensive for companies to perform so they only do them if they are actually needed. 
 

Plus, the car dealership can’t remove you from a recall list. 

[ICrappedMyPants | 302]

I still get recall notices from Honda for a vehicle I donated. I called them on two different occasions to say we no longer own the vehicle after my mother-in-law halfway across the country was getting them because they started reaching out to my wife. I still get the notices. They’re incompetent.

[Tulpa | 3,492]

The pass the buck mentality is a combination between departments siloing themselves off from each other, which kills any sort of communication short of a crisis, and employee apathy*.

I once had someone call me in tears because they got bounced around the system for an hour, and of course my department wasn't responsible for what they needed. I did take the time to try to find out who was (and confirm with them that they would actually take care of the caller.)

*and honestly, I'm not blaming the employees so much. Managers and C-suite people need to take some of that responsibility, too.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Tulpa

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

19 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

As someone who worked in the service department of a Car dealership for 10 years, I lol’d at you throwing away a recall notice.

Well, I called to work out the scheduling, then got asked to bring all copies of keys that I had and asked why, then was informed exactly what the procedure was.  After that, we had exactly zero interest in spending at least 3-4 hours for them to take care of what should be a roughly 30 second job across the 3-4 keys that we had.

22 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

Those are required to be performed, regardless of what time it takes. Recalls are very expensive for companies to perform so they only do them if they are actually needed.

The "repair" doesn't fix the issue, because only one key we had was actually issued by GM, so every copy that we got thereafter would just cause the issue to still be present.  They're required to provide the service to anybody who brings their car in to have it done who wants it done, but I don't know that they have any actual legal obligation to get to every car out there that would qualify.  In our case, the only thing that would actually fix the issue would be for them to produce and install new lock cylinders that required more force or some sort of additional intervention to release the key once it was placed in and turned.  In the case of this "recall," I'd be amazed if their cost was actually $0.25 per car (counting two keys per car) given what the actual "fix" they implemented was.  They absolutely spent more money mailing us for years than they ever would have doing the fix.

25 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

Plus, the car dealership can’t remove you from a recall list. 

 

According to every postcard we've ever gotten, the dealership is actually the ones mailing them out.  If that's no the case, that's on them to figure out and end, as we no longer have the car, or, more importantly for their purposes, the keys to be able to have them perform their "fix."  We can't take ourselves off the list, so even if the dealership can't take care of it directly, they can figure out who we need to talk to and get us in contact with them.  I would think that if they wanted repeat business, they'd actually take care of their existing/previous customers, but with the world we live in...

11 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

The pass the buck mentality is a combination between departments siloing themselves off from each other, which kills any sort of communication short of a crisis, and employee apathy.

Bingo.  That's one of the reasons why I always tried to find out and understand what other departments did, as well as make and keep contacts therein so that I could properly, if indirectly, help people who were transferred to me incorrectly.  I would also actually speak with the person who answered my transfer request first to determine if they were the right place and, if not, who was, in order to make it a one-pass-experience for the customer.  I'd like to say that I was rewarded for such behavior, but beyond a few back pats and "attaboys" from my bosses at the time, no such luck.  I've long since lost the details, but I still have unredeemed offers of free limo service in Vegas, taxi service in LA, and a few other odds and ends goodies that customers pressed me to note down and take them up on whenever I was in the area simply for taking the time to understand and resolve their issue, even if it wasn't something I could take care of directly.  Even made a good number of sales via callbacks to such folks, which did pad my check at the time.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

@darkchylde28 30 seconds? Thats all I have to hear.  I dont blame you for having zero idea how scheduling works in a service department, or how there arent techs just standing around waiting for you. Usually the companies ownership information is populated by the dealership, so I can see why you think its coming from the dealership (as a side note, dealerships usually make a little bit of money on each warranty recall from the manufacturer so they have a vested interest in brining your car in- not to mention upsell opportunities)
 

is this the recall? If so, looks like 124 deaths were attributed to that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls

 

no wonder why they keep sending recall notices lol  

It seems like you just want to complain about getting the run around which is fair. Just keep throwing the recall notices away.

 

I just thank God I no longer work at the car dealership where every customer acts like their time is move valuable than the one before and after. I used to get people saying they were going to sue me if I didnt send a tech to their house to do whatever little recall was the current one. I would tell them go ahead lol
 

 

[Mega Tank | 960]

Wow. We had a similar issue for a car that had been taken to the junker maaany years before. We had to call the car manufacturer and get them to remove the VIN or whatever from the list.

 

We once dropped off my wife's car for service. They never bothered to let us know the status of it as it was supposed to be a simple oil change, which usually takes several hours because the dealership gets that full, and by the time I called them to find out before they closed the service center, they said the service team had left. I was pissed and went in person as they had no idea where the car was or if it was in their possession. They had a cleaning lady open up the service bay doors and had the sales manager get us our car. The same sales manager that said we wouldn't get our car until the next day. Freaking jerks. Turns out they never bothered to let us know that the car was ready and the car was in the spots waiting to be picked up.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

5 hours ago, MrWunderful said:

@darkchylde28 30 seconds? Thats all I have to hear.  I dont blame you for having zero idea how scheduling works in a service department, or how there arent techs just standing around waiting for you. Usually the companies ownership information is populated by the dealership, so I can see why you think its coming from the dealership (as a side note, dealerships usually make a little bit of money on each warranty recall from the manufacturer so they have a vested interest in brining your car in- not to mention upsell opportunities)

Dude, 30 seconds.  The keys were about 1" wide with a ~4mm tall, 3/4" wide rounded rectangular slot in the top that the ring for the keys twisted into.  The "fix" was to put two foam "bumpers" into either end of that rectangle so as to reduce the open area in the back of the key that the ring could sit it and/or travel to slightly less than that of a pencil eraser.  If trained technicians can't put two f'n foam blocks in the plastic back of an 1/8" thick key in a few seconds, there's something very, very wrong with them.  Now, whether they bill GM or whoever for the "four hours" they said we would have to wait to have this "vital" service done is neither here nor there, I'm talking about the actual in-out time of me having to be there once they were ready for me.

If a service department can't schedule me to show up roughly when a tech is supposed to be available to start addressing my issue, again, there's something very, very wrong with them.  I understand completely that delays happen, and that if I showed up on time, it's possible that a tech would be late in getting to me.  But, when I called and ended up asking what the deal was and what they actually needed to do, the people in the service department impressed upon me that somehow, magically, it would take their technicians SEVERAL HOURS to put the small foam blocks into the backs of the 3-4 keys we had for that car, something which is beyond ridiculous and unacceptable, and why we ended up ignoring it, since as I said before, the "fix" is a moot point the moment one of us loses a key and we have to get another one cut literally anywhere else that sells GM keys.

5 hours ago, MrWunderful said:

is this the recall? If so, looks like 124 deaths were attributed to that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls

That very well might have been it.  However, they absolutely were not replacing the ignition module (which I ended up having to swap out myself a year or two before the car went belly up, as my wife's key unexpectedly got permanently stuck in the lock and wouldn't come out, to the point that my brother and I had to drill the cylinder to the point where the internal part holding the key was completely destroyed), they were offering to make us waste 3-4 hours in a lobby while they fixed our keys.

6 hours ago, MrWunderful said:

no wonder why they keep sending recall notices lol  

It seems like you just want to complain about getting the run around which is fair. Just keep throwing the recall notices away.

Perhaps, but honestly what flabbergasted me was the utter incompetence of the last person, who once they were told that Service said they were the ones to do it, the lady just capitulated and was like, "Oh, ok, I'm doing that right now," indicating that she'd had the ability the whole time, she just couldn't be bothered to do her job.  If they keep sending them, they'll keep going in the trash (as this last one did, I had to fish it back out to make sure it was the same one you linked, but unfortunately some other, wetter garbage managed to rub off several numbers in the designation of the specific "UNINTENDED IGNITION KEY ROTATION" recall.  The car was a 2005 Impala, if that helps; some random Google results that came up while I was trying to confirm the card was for that recall seem to indicate that while the Impala was included in the overall recall, it wasn't considered one of the critically affected ones, which might explain why we weren't getting a new ignition switch (which it likely sorely needed given its propensity to just randomly show "SECURITY" and lock you out of starting the car for ~10 minutes every time it got remotely damp outside).

6 hours ago, MrWunderful said:

I just thank God I no longer work at the car dealership where every customer acts like their time is move valuable than the one before and after. I used to get people saying they were going to sue me if I didnt send a tech to their house to do whatever little recall was the current one. I would tell them go ahead lol

Hey, everybody's time is more valuable to them than someone else's, but I understand your pain there, as there's quite a lot of the same thing going on in call center work, regardless of what you're doing and who you're doing it for.  I always try to be as prompt as possible when showing up for scheduled appointments, and I totally get and understand that overruns will happen.  However, I don't get or appreciate being told that I need to show up at, say, noon, that a tech will begin addressing my issue immediately, and it will be 3-4 PM before they're done, oh, and they're putting foam inserts into the slot at the back of each key.  If that's the kind of rocket scientists they've got working there, they need to knock off the obvious nepotism, clean house, and rehire, lol.

[OptOut | 8,883]

I didn't bother to read that long-ass post.

Is it because I am lazy, or because I am incompetent?... YOU decide!

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

sometimes you’ll get lucky with someone who cares. But 90% of the time I have to talk to someone on the phone…..they just don’t give a shit. Straight up they sound like they wanna say “fuuuuuuck youuuuuuu I don’t give a shit”.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

14 minutes ago, OptOut said:

I didn't bother to read that long-ass post.

Is it because I am lazy, or because I am incompetent?... YOU decide!

It's because you're lazy, lol.  If you were incompetent, you'd have forwarded your reply responsibilities on to @fcgamer immediately. 

13 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

sometimes you’ll get lucky with someone who cares. But 90% of the time I have to talk to someone on the phone…..they just don’t give a shit. Straight up they sound like they wanna say “fuuuuuuck youuuuuuu I don’t give a shit”.

Having worked phones a lot in the course of my years of employment, I totally get that, but only after someone has been a total douchebag to the rep or dropped something in their lap that is a total shit sandwich and the rep is just not able to catch themselves during their first reaction to it.  Anything beyond that and they're just incompetent and honestly don't need (or deserve, if I'm to be honest about how I really feel) to be doing that job.  Yeah, it's often a shitty job, but folks get paid to do it, and to do it well (even if they aren't necessarily paid well to do it).  If you can't actually try to help people or not be shitty to people who you haven't yet interacted with or who haven't shit on you, then you need to find something else to do, as you give actual competent people (and hell, even folks in non-native call centers who get stuck on scripts) a bad name, and unfairly to boot.  If you're at the point where you're not feeling it, you fake it, and if you're at the point you can't fake it, it's time to take a break and regroup, go home early and regroup, or go apply for something else to do for a living, most likely not interacting with the public.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

Is.......this your first time? This has happened to me in similar scenarios with call centres at least 50 times in my life, I thought I was going to read something more absurd here.

And why would you think a dealership can remove you from a recall list? The recalls are mandated by the federal government, passed onto the parent company's head office and then distributed by each dealership individually. You need to contact the head office for the parent manufacturer.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

21 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Is.......this your first time? This has happened to me in similar scenarios with call centres at least 50 times in my life, I thought I was going to read something more absurd here.

And why would you think a dealership can remove you from a recall list? The recalls are mandated by the federal government, passed onto the parent company's head office and then distributed by each dealership individually. You need to contact the head office for the parent manufacturer.

It's my first time dealing with (secondhand) someone so blatantly, flagrantly, incompetent, yes.  I've run into plenty of people who were just bad at their jobs, especially in call center work, but I can't recall ever having run into one person, let alone a few of them, all in the same call, who all just flat out refused to even think about the issue or properly address it before making it someone else's problem.  And I've had all kinds of maddening interactions with non-native call centers, which is really saying something (being stuck in a script and having no ability to think beyond it makes you bat at your job, not automatically lazy and completely incompetent, at least in my book).

The dealership is the one listed as sending the cards, is the return address on the cards, and is all of the contact information on all of the cards, so one would assume that they would be the ones who started this, and the ones who can put a cease to it.  My wife bought the car from them, so it stands to reason that the dealership folks are the ones who noted down that she bought the GM car from the GM dealership and thus started the ball rolling in regard to keeping her up to date on recalls.  If those folks can't directly take her/us off the list, they should certainly be able to advise who to contact at GM to do so, as the car simply does not exist as a car anymore, therefore no recall can or will ever be performed on it (or, rather, its keys, per my above posts).  If the parent manufacturer was the one to contact directly about it, you'd think that they'd include some of their information on the cards that "they" send out.

When I was still customer facing at work, you can bet your ass that while neither I nor my company could offer warranty service for any of the Xerox, Dell, HP, etc., printers we sold, I could be counted on to be competent enough to know this, as well as to either have the proper manufacturer contact information on-hand to provide, or spend a minute or two digging through my work data base or researching online to find the correct information for the customer who needed it.  Most of the folks my wife spoke to today not only DNGAF, but they didn't even remotely try to do anything resembling their job before announcing that it was some other, random department's problem.  The geniuses who suggested "Service" as the right destination simply heard "recall" and went into "not my problem" mode automatically, which is incompetent, and unnacceptable.  If I'd pulled that type of crap while on the phones, I'd have been coached, warned, then walked out of the building upon continuing to do it.  The fact that this is more or less expected anymore says loads about the companies missing this type of thing these days as well as consumers who have grown so accustomed to it that they just accept putting up with it when they absolutely shouldn't.  It's not out of line or being a "Karen" to expect someone who's not in training to at least try to do their job.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

Be prepared to be in similar situations at least 50 more times in your life.

I used to work in the USA on a temporary VISA and one day when I was calling the Social Security office, I noticed the 1-800 number was dead......it just didn't work. I had literally nothing to do and I was bored out of my mind, I knew nobody so I decided to drive all the way down there just to tell them. I took a number and when I was finally called, it went something like this:

me - Hi, I have this form here to call you to get a Social Security Number for work but the number doesn't work.

her - Sir, how can I help you?

me - Well, this number, it doesn't work so a lot of people are going to have trouble contacting you.

her - I don't know anything about that, is there something else I can help you with?

me - Well.....no, I just wanted people to be able to contact you. Do you know whom takes care of........hello?

And she just walked away. Literally just walked in the back and I was left there until I felt a tap on my shoulder and security was there to escort me off the premises.

THAT's incompetence. 

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

21 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Be prepared to be in similar situations at least 50 more times in your life.

I used to work in the USA on a temporary VISA and one day when I was calling the Social Security office, I noticed the 1-800 number was dead......it just didn't work. I had literally nothing to do and I was bored out of my mind, I knew nobody so I decided to drive all the way down there just to tell them. I took a number and when I was finally called, it went something like this:

me - Hi, I have this form here to call you to get a Social Security Number for work but the number doesn't work.

her - Sir, how can I help you?

me - Well, this number, it doesn't work so a lot of people are going to have trouble contacting you.

her - I don't know anything about that, is there something else I can help you with?

me - Well.....no, I just wanted people to be able to contact you. Do you know whom takes care of........hello?

And she just walked away. Literally just walked in the back and I was left there until I felt a tap on my shoulder and security was there to escort me off the premises.

THAT's incompetence. 

Seriously, please don't take offense at this, but having interacted with you on here, I have some very serious doubts that your interaction you described happened with the level of calmness, politeness, and non-awkwardness that you're describing.  (At least, as perceived by the other people there at the time.)

I mean, anything's possible, but 99.9999999999999(ad infinitum)% of the time, for someone in any US government office to just walk away from you without notice or obvious emergency and then "security" to appear and throw you out?  That's virtually always on the person who walked into that office in some way (what they specifically said, how they acted, how aggressive they were, etc.).

Also, what social security office are you claiming had "security?"  I'm not aware of any normal governmental offices in the continental US that employ or keep any sort of "security" staff on-site; every situation I've ever heard of where a customer needed to be removed, local law enforcement had to be contacted, then arrive, enter the building, assess the situation, and then escort whoever out, if necessary.

If this really is a real thing that happened to you, just as you stated, and it didn't actually have anything to do with tone, stance, social cues, etc., you need to go out and play the lottery right now, as you're that .00000000000000whatever infinitesimally small outlier.

[Californication | 1,477]

DMV/USPS -  100% 

Social Security - Sheeiitt

It took me like 8 phone calls and 6 months to get them to send checks to the correct address. After the third month I just stopped contacting them and paid my brother's bills out of pocket. At the end of the year they fixed the address and sent a stack of checks.

[Rhapsody98 | 1,535]

20 hours ago, OptOut said:

I didn't bother to read that long-ass post.

Is it because I am lazy, or because I am incompetent?... YOU decide!

I might go with smart.  

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

...who changed the title of my post, and why?  There wasn't a typo, WTAF stands for WT Actual F, so unsure how or why that came to be ~16 minutes from me seeing the note there and posting this reply/update.  I don't see any way for me to do it and return things to as they were, so I'm left scratching my head as to what's up.

[Tulpa | 3,492]

Damn acronym police.

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

20 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Seriously, please don't take offense at this, but having interacted with you on here, I have some very serious doubts that your interaction you described happened with the level of calmness, politeness, and non-awkwardness that you're describing.  (At least, as perceived by the other people there at the time.)

I mean, anything's possible, but 99.9999999999999(ad infinitum)% of the time, for someone in any US government office to just walk away from you without notice or obvious emergency and then "security" to appear and throw you out?  That's virtually always on the person who walked into that office in some way (what they specifically said, how they acted, how aggressive they were, etc.).

Also, what social security office are you claiming had "security?"  I'm not aware of any normal governmental offices in the continental US that employ or keep any sort of "security" staff on-site; every situation I've ever heard of where a customer needed to be removed, local law enforcement had to be contacted, then arrive, enter the building, assess the situation, and then escort whoever out, if necessary.

If this really is a real thing that happened to you, just as you stated, and it didn't actually have anything to do with tone, stance, social cues, etc., you need to go out and play the lottery right now, as you're that .00000000000000whatever infinitesimally small outlier.

You'd think so, but no. It sounds like a story where I want to pretend I wasn't sarcastic or screaming but I actually stood there waiting for her to return because she just left so abruptly and then a tap on my shoulder. I was super confused but I do have Autism so perhaps I totally missed something.

This was the Atlanta downtown office. When I was walking in, I had to present my driver's license to security and the woman looking at it said, "Alberta? Where's that? Peurto Rico?" It was then I knew what I was dealing with.

[Tulpa | 3,492]

2 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

You'd think so, but no. It sounds like a story where I want to pretend I wasn't sarcastic or screaming but I actually stood there waiting for her to return because she just left so abruptly and then a tap on my shoulder. I was super confused but I do have Autism so perhaps I totally missed something.

This was the Atlanta downtown office. When I was walking in, I had to present my driver's license to security and the woman looking at it said, "Alberta? Where's that? Peurto Rico?" It was then I knew what I was dealing with.

That's that famous Southern Hospitality.

 

Also, American bureaucrats are not interested in correcting anything in their system. Especially if you point it out to them.

Remember that next time you're bored. Go play a video game or something.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

12 hours ago, Tulpa said:

That's that famous Southern Hospitality.

Having moved to the South when I was young, with parents who absolutely didn't sound like they were from the area, I can attest that "Southern Hospitality" can be an absolute myth depending on the area if "ya'll ain't from 'round here."  I know that this is going to sound silly, but at the time that we moved, the attitude in a lot of places around where we lived was still very much the "us versus them" that had been handed down from the (US) Civil War forward, with many of the children or grandchildren of folks directly involved in that struggle still alive at the time to enforce and pass along the attitude.  I'm not speaking ill of the dead, nor wish anyone to pass on unnecessarily, but the older I've gotten, the more of those folks have passed on, and I'm thankful for it, as the attitude that came from that 100 plus year old thinking has slowly died with them.  Southern hospitality can be a wonderful thing, as warm and magical as it's often portrayed in media, but only when it's coming from someone who was raised right and chooses to act that way as well, which often wasn't the case as and where I grew up.

12 hours ago, Tulpa said:

Also, American bureaucrats are not interested in correcting anything in their system. Especially if you point it out to them.

Remember that next time you're bored. Go play a video game or something.

I think it depends on how egregious the error is, and how much that can come back to bite them in the ass.  Also, someone "answering" the window at a local Social Security office wouldn't normally be a bureaucrat--only the people at the very top echelons would fall really fall into that category.  Still, don't expect the peons at the front desk to necessarily correct anything (that doesn't directly affect them), either.

[TDIRunner | 2,733]

On 4/25/2022 at 12:41 PM, darkchylde28 said:

 

  Hide contents

......

 

I had the same recall on my wife's car years ago before we sold it.  The reason the recall takes so long is due to the epoxy they use to glue the inserts together.  They don't want it to fall off or have someone take it apart, so they use a slow setting epoxy.  It was quite ridiculous, but still only the second most ridiculous recall I've ever heard about.  

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

2 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

I had the same recall on my wife's car years ago before we sold it.  The reason the recall takes so long is due to the epoxy they use to glue the inserts together.  They don't want it to fall off or have someone take it apart, so they use a slow setting epoxy.  It was quite ridiculous, but still only the second most ridiculous recall I've ever heard about.  

Thank you for this!  While I still agree with my/our decision over the years to just "meh" this, your answer actually makes sense!  I figured it was just a couple of little hardish, pellet-like things that they would press in and be done, but if they were using epoxy to make them permanent, then yeah, that could take a while depending on whether they're just wanting it to set, stop being tacky, or fully cure before letting you be on your way.  It still doesn't solve the problem of additional spares, though, the way that just changing out the lock cylinders would, lol.  Yeah, they might have lost "millions" on this just due to how many keys are out there, but that's not nearly what they should have lost by doing the job right and fixing the actual problem.

[Link | 2,709]

3 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

don't expect the peons at the front desk to necessarily correct anything

Or be anywhere near the level to make that happen. You enter a bugfix request, it'll often sit for six months or more, and then just go away with no (visible) action taken.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Link