4 ms·
One of the saddest parts of filling in these government forms online is that some of them time out after 15 or 20 minutes. I helped someone fill out few of the
by tnuc 15y ago
One of the saddest parts of filling in these government forms online is that some of them time out after 15 or 20 minutes.
I helped someone fill out few of these once because they were having trouble. Even when I had all the information in front of me and the person next to me to organize the information it still timed out. I managed to do one of them on the third try.
There is no way that someone with limited computer experience could fill out a lot of these online forms. Phoning gets you nowhere, and visiting the office for help is a waste of a day.
If only government entities could spend some time into making these online forms and applications usable. Fortunately libraries still exist but I fear for how much longer.
- thyrsus 15y agoI was subjected to that last weekend, filling out FASFA forms. It would throw up an "I'm timing out" box every ten minutes, and if you didn't click in the next five, it was gone. It took me 32 working hours to pull together the records to satisfy that form, of which 16 hours were "PTO" from my day job. Mostly because it was effectively necessary to get our 2011 joint tax return done, and my spouse has an (excruciatingly) small business. Once the taxes were done, I used a kitchen timer to make sure I clicked on that "I'm timing out" box which was hidden in another window while I was getting transaction reports. Someone on NPR had the gall to claim the form would take at most a half hour. The only way I can see that working is if you had no complications in your life (investments, medical expenses, one employer).