Ok, so I won’t bore you with the back and forth details that led up to this. The important thing to know is that I needed to talk to a human at the IRS to ask a very simple question that would take just a few minutes to look into.
Me trying to call for 3 days dozens of calls dealing with this shit. I eventually figured out how to prompt the AI to let me push buttons to reach menus.
After all that I plotted out what each option does.
ALL OF THEM either lead to a pre-recorded message that says to visit the website, OR attempts to transfer you, before telling you there are no agents taking calls for that option.
Eventually, I wondered what would happen if I said to the AI agent “TAX FRAUD”.
Boom. Straight through to an agent.
I feel bad for lying to the hotline, but also, I was left no valid options to talk to a human. Once I said tax fraud, my issue which I had spent probably 100 calls in 3 days trying to get through, was over in 10 minutes. And 6 of those minutes she put me back on hold to research my issue.
Fuck AI
We all know Trump gutted the IRS. This is what happens when nobody works there anymore. This is not just an AI problem. The administration is just using the AI to hide the truth. Of course the few survivors are assigned to Tax Fraud, so they can help Trump and his cronies commit it.
Sounds like a good time to avoid being audited. As in, very easy to do.
Nah I work in the business and they’re still auditing people. It just takes a hell of a lot longer to get it all sorted out bc it takes ages to actually talk to a real person or set up an appt if needed
Also, and I doubt this surprises anyone, but Trump’s IRS is not targeting the rich. The wealthy and connected have accountants and lawyers and fight back. So they’re going after working and lower-income people who cheated or made mistakes, because it’s easier to get fees and punishments. Also, the cruelty is the point…
Sometimes too if you swear at the chatbot enough it’ll escalate you to a human.
May not work for IRS or government agencies but it does tend to work for companies.
I’m certain some of those calls by me were profanity laced. I have no kids, and live alone. So me talking to a spatula isn’t out of the question, and cursing at whatever I’m angry at is pretty common at my place.
So I’m sure just instinctively I cursed this AI out a few times.
Plus…it’s AI. If AI isn’t to be cursed at, what is?
Last time I swore at a chatbot it hung up on me
I usually mumble. That usually gets me to a human.
For most companies I speak complete jibberish. Then it’ll say something like “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you. Could you repeat that?”
And do it 3 times, and it will route you to either a push button system where you press a number for an option (yay!) or a human (YAAAAAAY!!!).
Sometimes itjust hangs up instead.
Thanks. They e been holding my refund since February. No notices. Nothing on the website… just sitting there with a “it’s taking longer than expected”
I think that counts as tax fraud
reminds my of that drive-through ai you could bypass by ordering like 50’000 cups of water
