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Friday, April 03, 2015
The Census-GRRRR
How Do You Feel About the Census?
I’m asking because I was ready to scream at the entire
event.
As I’m sure many of you also received an envelope supposedly
containing a packet-you may understand my frustration.
The census is a necessary thing that is a royal pain in the
patootie.
In our case, my envelope had the address card that had a bar
code, a sequence number and our address.
On the bottom with an 866 phone number in case you had any
questions. It also had a letter from the
US Dept. of Commerce saying you had to go on-line to take the test or call the
866 number.
I dutifully went on line and there was a 6 minute tutorial
and a log-in area. Evidently my address
card was supposed to have a special 8 digit number for me to use. Trouble?
It did not. Before calling the
given phone number I actually watched the tutorial-thinking maybe it would
enlighten me as to other areas that this log in number would be other than the
area circled in red on the picture on the website.
It did NOT. So I
called the number and waited. After 10
minutes I used my option to leave my name and number for someone to call me
back. After 2 days I realized I never
got the call back-so I repeated the 10 minute/message process.
After a few days of not thinking about the census at all-I
received a postcard reminding me that I needed to still do the on-line
test. Wanting to do what was asked of
me, I did a 3-peat of the phone call.
That took me up to the very last day to get this thing
done. No one called me back-again. So after coming home very calm, cool and
collected from Tai Chi-I called the 866 number again and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
After 22 minutes a very nice woman came on and asked me how
she could help. I told her the problem
and about the various calls, wait times and unanswered messages. Then SHE ASKED ME FOR THE LOG IN NUMBER!
I re-iterated that this was the problem-I didn’t have one!
She asked if I wanted to do it right then over the
phone. I gratefully said, “Yes, please.”
10 minutes later I was done and both of us were happy.
Hopefully I won’t have to do the census for quite some time-I
do not have the patience to wait on hold for anything for a long time to come.
Just so you all know-I finally did get a call back-it was on
my answering machine today, having a time stamp of 11:30 a.m... Not bad, only 3 days after the deadline. Of course they didn’t leave the needed
information. Just a suggestion to call
them back.
