Some good old fashioned government waste!

[Firebraun]

We've all seen it, but here's a new one for the "bureaucratic idiocy" files.

A couple of months ago I pop in to the good ol' DMV to get new plates for the ride. Deal is that you have to surrender the old ones to get the new ones. OK, fine with me. Here they are. Pay the fee to register the new plates for a full year and off I go.

Yesterday the mailman brings me a check from the "Office of the State Controller" on an account called "Accounts Payable Warrant." in the amount of ONE WHOLE DOLLAR! I'm wondering just what exactly I did to deserve such generosity from my oh-so benevolent state's government.

Answer is on the memo line at the bottom of the check: "License plate turn-in." Seems that the state deemed it necessary to go to the trouble of having a (no doubt highly paid) accountant spend a few minutes of their time processing a check to me for ONE DOLLAR, and then spent 34 cents of their annual postage budget to send it to me.

Ya think it might be easier to just let the DMV folks apply a ONE DOLLAR credit to your registration fee when you turn in your old plates?


Firebraun

[TailboardJockey]

No way, that makes way too much sense and would deprive some poor bastard of a job!

[daysleeper47]

Being a democrat, I say let the poor, over-paid accountant keep his job...just think, he might be your son, your grandson, your neighbor, your cousin...you get the idea. Anyway, if he didn't have a job, that's just one more mouth for the government to feed through welfare. I guess buracracy ain't so bad after all...

[Dalmatian90]

For two years, 24 months, UConn sent me a bill with a 32 cents of postage on it to inform me I owed them 50 cents...

[3greyhounds]

I got a refund last year from the phone company for 21 cents. Yep... a check for 21 cents...

After I stopped laughing, I figured if they were going to spend 34 cents to mail it, plus accounting fees, etc., the least I could do was not cash the check...

It probably drove the accountants crazy... "hey, we're 21 cents over in the checking account!"

[UTFFEMT]

After paying off and closing an account for over 10K. I received yet another statement saying I owed them $1.63.

I told them if they did not drop the balance they could go ahead and spend the over 1000 chasing me down for that dollar and change. They dropped it and closed the account.

Where is the common sense??? these people must all be George Castanzas-Sienfeld.

[apatrol]

I just got my quarterly stock dividends and earned 18 cents...check came certified mail....SAd thing is I am not sure who to send the forms to to re-invest dividends...the return address is 1 WTC...

[FFsSignfOthr]

The mayor of my hometown actually got a check for .01 from the IRS (THEY had made an error). But they also sent him two other letters beforehand telling him that a check would be coming in the mail. Let's see, .34 x 3 = $1.02, plus paper/envelope costs, and who knows how much $ in labor. What a joke! "Here's your sign!"

I also had .11 cents due on a charge card since my payment showed up at the payment center a day late. I let them keep sending me statements for months until it got up to a whopping dollar before I finally called them and told them to quit wasting their money trying to collect. They dropped it No wonder the rates are so high.