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Ask HN: Why do government services force you to call them or write a letter?
2 points by chatmasta on April 20, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments
I have caused so many problems for myself simply because I’m anxious about phone calls and procrastinate calling government services for a year or more at a time.

Why do they insist we call them, often to wait on hold for an hour and not even get through to a human?

Surely it would be better for everyone if we could use a modern ticketing system for asynchronous communication.

I’ve found this problem consistently in both the US and the UK.



Look into online snail mail services - you can write mail on a web UI and they'll print and post it for you. This is a good solution to deal with bureaucracy with less effort while maintaining a proper paper trail.

You can even couple it with an LLM to parse & write the bullshit on your behalf.

A good UK one is https://www.pc2paper.co.uk/.


Here in continental Europe I've found email effective at all levels, from national down to my village.


Unless you got to an german buerocrat, i mean those who see anything out of the norm as nonexisting, then you are out of luck.


I'm sure that even in the UK and the US, there are secret email addresses where you can skip to the front of the queue. But I'm not gonna email my local MP or congressperson about some clerical error in my taxes. And even if I got through to a person, they'd probably tell me to call them.


Even emailaddresses have the securityclearance of NVD, this is the lowest but most used, because it has next to no requirements, but serious consequences if they deem it as an leak.




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