4 ms·

I've dealt with the IRS and with the Apple App Store. The former has far better customer service and is much more transparent.

• splitstud 5y ago
  It's actually surprising how good it is
• fatnoah 5y ago
  Not gonna lie, my one and only call with the IRS required waiting about 60 minutes on hold, but once I got to talk to someone, they were friendly, knowledgable, and completely took care of my problem. In my interactions with app store review, it's usually resulted in a terse response that required some guessing to fully understand. In some cases, we simply gave up because it was too hard to get real answers from someone.
  • reaperducer 5y ago
    my one and only call with the IRS required waiting about 60 minutes on hold Recently I learned that Waiting-on-Hold-as-a-Service is a thing. According to the newspaper (I forget which one — lots of dead trees around my apartment), there are companies that hire people to do nothing but wait on hold on customer service lines. When the person on hold is next in line, if the company has a paying customer, they switch the call over to them. If not, the person who's been waiting on hold all that time drops the call and dials in again, sort of reserving a spot for the next paying customer. The rate to get straight through to the IRS is $1,000 to $5,000. I think it's a monthly subscription. A bargain for lawyers and accountants and such.
    • ValentineC 5y ago
      I'm surprised few others are creating agnostic competitors to Google Pixel's Hold for Me feature: https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10071878?hl=en https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/10071878?hl=en
    • howinteresting 5y ago
      Accountants and such have specialized needs, but for ordinary people, you can just get that for free with a Google Pixel.
      • reaperducer 5y ago
        It's not the same thing. The Google thing waits on hold for you. But you still wait. These services connect you immediately because they have people who have already done the waiting.
        • howinteresting 5y ago
          Ahh, I see. That's pretty cool!
• mdorazio 5y ago
  If you can actually contact the IRS at all. I called multiple times last year and wasn’t even able to be put on hold, just “sorry we have too many people trying to contact us, try later”. If you do actually get a hold of someone, IRS is helpful but also outdated (I had to sign up for a fax service to send documentation to them). Apple’s responses often leave a lot to be desired, but at least you can use support forums and emails with a good response rate. Note that I don’t think this is the fault of the IRS at all - they are woefully underfunded and understaffed.
  • e4e78a06 5y ago
    I still find it baffling you need to _physically mail_ your stock brokerage transactions to the IRS in 2022. And you can only do it via USPS! My brokerage already reports all my gains/losses to the IRS, why do I need to mail another set of the same documents on top of that?
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Do you? I never have and I do not see any instructions on Schedule D to breakout individual transactions if they were already included in 1099-B.
  • Kye 5y ago
    Context! Remember, they were slammed with more filings than usual due to the stimulus on top of the backlog from the previous new filings for the previous stimulus. They had to deal with this using a reduced staff amid figuring out how to deal with a newly remote workforce.
  • kmeisthax 5y ago
    The problem is at least partially that companies flood the IRS call center with spam calls, for the express purpose of "reserving a spot" for people who pay them for expedited access to the IRS call queue.
• tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  It's the same in the UK, I've always had good service from HMRC. Mind you I suspect people who fiddle their taxes have a different opinion of them.