Wannabe Customer to USPS: Phbtthhphtbbb!

Today it took the better part of an hour and $12 to send my Arizona tax returns to the Department of Revenue. I would’ve done better to have driven downtown and hand-delivered the thing. It wouldn’t have taken any longer and, since gas is under $2 a gallon just now, the cost would have been about $1.95 plus $60 worth of my time. Not $12 plus $60 worth of my time.

Think of that: the real cost of mailing a tax return was right around $72. Thank you, USPS!

Wonder-Accountant delivered the mountain of personal and corporate returns yesterday — we’d had to take extensions on both, since she spent the tax season enjoying the same surgical adventures I so loved a year or so ago. She of course was able to file the federal returns electronically, but the forward-looking State of Arizona, ever ten years behind the rest of the country, will only accept hard copy. So she  prepared and addressed the snail-mail envelope and the return-receipt request and all that.

This being Tuesday, I figured the lines at the Post Office would be within reason, so headed out around 2 p.m. to pony up cash to the USPS at the station closest to my house.

And yea verily! Only three people were in line ahead of me.

So I joined the merry crowd. And stood there. And stood there. And stood there. And stood there. And stood there. Three customers were at the counter. Two postal service agents were waiting on them. One of these wandered off, leaving the other to continue what evidently had already been a lengthy transaction with a woman. The two male customers at the counter had struck up a casual friendship while they were standing around the P.O. — which should tell you how long they’d been hanging out. They chatted back and forth as if they’d known each other since the beginning of time.

They probably had.

Two of the people in front of me were listening to the conversation between the remaining customer service agent and the woman. I didn’t hear what was said, but they did; whatever it was, it elicited a snort of “wouldn’tcha-know-it” laughter and a knowing glance between the two in line. The transaction at the counter visibly entered a more complex phase, with extensive yakking back and forth. Now that agent wandered off into the back.

And, like the other one, she stayed gone.

So now we had three people standing at the counter and zero customer service reps on the other side of the counter.

Time ticked past.

Eventually, after I’d been standing there about ten minutes, I thought…my time is worth something…and this exercise ain’t payin’ the bills! Decided I would count slowly to 120. If one person moved forward in the line, then I would stay. If no one moved forward, I would go to another post office.

Speaking of slow, there are surely only two possible explanations for the customer service efficiency at the Post Office: either they train their employees to move in slow motion, or they put some kind of drug in the water fountains.

One hundred and twenty s-l-o-w-w-w-w counts later, neither agent had returned to the counter. Everyone was still standing in place. A couple more customers had come in the door and joined the back of the line.

I left. Drove over to the post office in the ’hood where I used to live, which at times is a pretty efficient operation.

There a man practically ran to get to the door ahead of me. He slammed his way through the door and then deliberately shut it in my face. Not the fault of the USPS, of course, but a clue to why employees just might be less than enthusiastic about waiting on us Great Unwashed types.

He charges to the line and grabs a place at the back. Didn’t have to charge far, because the line was almost back to the door.

Here, too, only two workers were on hand to deal with a horde of customers, and those two workers also appeared to have imbibed some soporific from the water supply.

Obviously, this was going to waste even more of my time than had already been wasted. I left.

Drove over to the nearest FedEx outlet. Parked right in front. A guy coming out of the store kindly waited until I hobbled from the car to the sidewalk before stepping off the pavement to walk out between the vehicles. Not so irritable, apparently. Wonder why?

Inside, two  customer service types were staffing a desk that had no (0.00) line. They had no problem shipping the package down to the Department of Revenue using the registered mail, return-receipt-requested forms Wonder-Accountant had prepared. And their arms and legs moved in real time, which was interesting.

Fee for the privilege of getting a functional organization to send my taxes to my honored government: $12.

If I’d had the common sense to go there first, that’s all it would have cost me, since that FedEx storefront is about a five-minute drive from my house.

To schlep the packet down to the Arizona Department of Revenue, come to think of it, would eat up about an hour, round-trip (plus God only knows how much in parking and in time required to find a human being there). Google provides the address…and 46 customer reviews averaging 1.5 stars, all told.

Some of the citizens’ appraisals of ADOR’s customer service are less than adoring (heh). This one has got to win some prize somewhere:

This place sounds like a scam. I’m not sure if this is a real Department. When I called the number on the letter it went straight to the person who’s name was on the letter. It never went to a switchboard or an operator. Then when I asked to whom I was speaking to, I could barely understand him and it was his own name he could not pronounce. I felt I woke him up, or he was watching TV. Did not want to converse with him or give them any personal information like SS number, phone number, date of birth, none of that stuff. Going to have to research to make sure this is a real place.

This is kind of weird.

Follows. No matter how colorful some other government agency gets, Arizona’s always takes the cake. 😀

Next tax season: Just go straight to the FedEx store and pony up the cash to ship off the state returns. Don’t even think about trying to use the U.S. Postal Service.