US Treasury, you suck. You suck so hard, you should be working the street corners.
So about six months ago I'd gone to my bank to cash in a couple savings bonds that should have matured, a $50 one and a $100 that I received, oh, back in elementary school about fifteen years ago.
After standing around for almost 15 minutes because first the woman had to, I don't know, look up my savings bonds in some huge three-ring binder for whatever reason, she hands me my deposit slip without a word. I'm on my way to the door when I look down at my slip and see that I was credited about $80.
Naturally, I'm like "wtf?" The woman behind the desk was useless for explaining WHY I wasn't getting the full $150, as it's been well over the 12 years it has always taken for my EE series bonds to mature. So she calls out her manager, a man who was even MORE useless, and instead of just telling me, "Go to the US Treasury's website, and you can type in your bond number to figure out how much interest it's earned," he proceeds, amidst much bumbling and the typical technological incompetence of many of the middle-aged, to make me wait around another ten or fifteen minutes to find out, yeah, the bonds haven't matured yet.
So, losing more patience by the minute, I tell him to just undo the transfer/cash-in, because fuck it (cursing solely in my head, mind you), I'll just wait until they DO mature, I'm not getting cheated out of another $70 or so.
Months later, I get my "annual interest income" summary from my bank for my taxes, and the idiots have that interest on there. Of course. So I have to go back to the bank and do some yelling, mostly along the lines of, "No you can not tell the government to charge me for this interest I 'earned,' as I told you take-backsies, and I never actually earned that interest."
But that's not the most infuriating thing here. Wait for it, lol.
So just now I finally got around to digging those bonds back out, to see how much (if any) closer they were to maturation, using the US Treasury's nifty little bond calculator. Now I'd been aware that, like the douche-bags they are, the government went and retroactively slashed the interest rates on bonds so they take longer than the previous standard of 12 years to fully mature. "Great," I thought, "it's already been fifteen years, how much longer am I going to have to wait for these?"
Turns out my bonds, issued in 1994 and 1995, won't fully mature until 2024 and 2025. THAT IS THIRTY (30!) YEARS FROM THE DATE OF ISSUE. BECAUSE, APPARENTLY, WE ARE TOO BUSY BAILING OUT THE BANKS SO THEY CAN THROW AWAY OUR MONEY ON EMPLOYEE BONUSES AND MASSAGES TO MAINTAIN ANY SORT OF FINACIAL ACCOUNTABILITY WHEN IT COMES TO THE PRIVATE CITIZEN.
MOTHER. FUCKING. MASSAGES.
I am SO full of rage over this, you don't even know (though I'm kind of fatalistically over it, even as I finish typing this, but hyperbole has stylistic effect, you know what I mean?). I'd kind of love to punch every member of Congress in the face right now. Ohhh, how satisfying that would be... ¬ ◡ ¬
After standing around for almost 15 minutes because first the woman had to, I don't know, look up my savings bonds in some huge three-ring binder for whatever reason, she hands me my deposit slip without a word. I'm on my way to the door when I look down at my slip and see that I was credited about $80.
Naturally, I'm like "wtf?" The woman behind the desk was useless for explaining WHY I wasn't getting the full $150, as it's been well over the 12 years it has always taken for my EE series bonds to mature. So she calls out her manager, a man who was even MORE useless, and instead of just telling me, "Go to the US Treasury's website, and you can type in your bond number to figure out how much interest it's earned," he proceeds, amidst much bumbling and the typical technological incompetence of many of the middle-aged, to make me wait around another ten or fifteen minutes to find out, yeah, the bonds haven't matured yet.
So, losing more patience by the minute, I tell him to just undo the transfer/cash-in, because fuck it (cursing solely in my head, mind you), I'll just wait until they DO mature, I'm not getting cheated out of another $70 or so.
Months later, I get my "annual interest income" summary from my bank for my taxes, and the idiots have that interest on there. Of course. So I have to go back to the bank and do some yelling, mostly along the lines of, "No you can not tell the government to charge me for this interest I 'earned,' as I told you take-backsies, and I never actually earned that interest."
But that's not the most infuriating thing here. Wait for it, lol.
So just now I finally got around to digging those bonds back out, to see how much (if any) closer they were to maturation, using the US Treasury's nifty little bond calculator. Now I'd been aware that, like the douche-bags they are, the government went and retroactively slashed the interest rates on bonds so they take longer than the previous standard of 12 years to fully mature. "Great," I thought, "it's already been fifteen years, how much longer am I going to have to wait for these?"
Turns out my bonds, issued in 1994 and 1995, won't fully mature until 2024 and 2025. THAT IS THIRTY (30!) YEARS FROM THE DATE OF ISSUE. BECAUSE, APPARENTLY, WE ARE TOO BUSY BAILING OUT THE BANKS SO THEY CAN THROW AWAY OUR MONEY ON EMPLOYEE BONUSES AND MASSAGES TO MAINTAIN ANY SORT OF FINACIAL ACCOUNTABILITY WHEN IT COMES TO THE PRIVATE CITIZEN.
MOTHER. FUCKING. MASSAGES.
I am SO full of rage over this, you don't even know (though I'm kind of fatalistically over it, even as I finish typing this, but hyperbole has stylistic effect, you know what I mean?). I'd kind of love to punch every member of Congress in the face right now. Ohhh, how satisfying that would be... ¬ ◡ ¬