The Intelligence Estimate

I know bitching about government and bureaucratic ineptitude is nothing so novel. I know that complaining about computers and problems encountered online is a little passe as well. But combine the two of them and you have the ingredients for the mother of all cluster fucks.

The other day Jen tells me that she "may have" screwed up my PIN for online access to my student loan information. She was trying to access the account information for tax purposes. She wanted to see how much interest I paid on my student loans last year. Well in the process she "may have" screwed up my PIN information, but she did nowhere near as good a job of screwing it up as the federal government has!

I got an email from the student loan people asking me to "reactivate" my PIN by going to their website. When I got there they asked me for my Social Security number, the first two digits of my last name and my birthdate. I entered that information and hit SUBMIT. I was taken to the next page where I was asked to answer the security question, "What is your mother's maiden name?" I answered the question and was taken to a page where I was alerted to the fact that I did not have a PIN. I already knew that. Wasn't that the point of entering all of the previous information? So you would GIVE me a new PIN?

I went back and tried again. I entered all the information on the first page and then the second page. When I got to the page where my new PIN should have been I was told that I had to reenter the information. When I reentered the information I was told that the number of requests had exceeded the limit. You asked me to ask again! Why am I being punished for following instructions?

Now it gave me an option to REQUEST A NEW PIN. That's what I just got through doing!

So now I have to wait another 3 business days to see if I have a PIN. Then, if I can make the PIN work, I can finally check my information, enter it into the IRS forms, send it into the federal government and POSSIBLY get a refund. Then again, they may just ask me to submit all the forms again and then tell me that I've sent in too many forms so they're denying a refund.