Rant #2,964: Please Don't Tell Me 'Bout the News

It is now two days after I haggled with a governmental agency and saw with my own eyes—and heard with my own ears—that no one is ready to take responsibility for complete and utter ineptitude,

I continue to shake my head about how I was treated by this agency, which is supposed to serve the population but is obviously only there to serve itself by picking up its weekly paycheck.

 
And I said that I had more to relate to you about ineptitude from somewhere else, and I will do that today.
 
I am doing it so that you are not part of a scam that is being perpetrated by of all things, your local newspaper.
 
Our local paper here on Long Island is Newsday, and I know that you have heard me many times talk about this publication as part of this site. I have even been in the newspaper several times, the last time about six months ago when I was spotlighted in a story about people who could not get hired as the pandemic raged on.
 
Most recently, I took them to task for not hiring me for a freelance job because of obvious ageism, although I cannot prove it.
 
But this time, it has nothing to do with any of those things related to employment, but I uncovered a scam that they are perpetrating that perhaps your local newspaper is also dumping on the public without telling them about it, and just going ahead and doing it without any permission whatsoever.
 
As you know, a few weeks ago, my family and I went on vacation, the first vacation we had had in three years, a point which might play into this scam.
 
As I always have when we go on vacation, I put a vacation hold on my newspaper delivery, so papers would not be delivered when I was away.
 
We went on vacation, we had the only break from the wretchedness of this summer during that week, and we returned home to face some new challenges.
 
All fine and good, I guess that is how this summer is going for us.
 
Earlier this week,, on that fateful Monday, while sorting through the mail, I came upon our Newsday bill, which we get every two months.
 
As I opened it, I said to my wife—and remember, this was the same day I was haggling with the Department of Social Services—“I hope they get this bill right. It should be less than normal because of the vacation hold, but with everything going on today, I will bet that there will be something wrong with this, too" ...
 
And my premonition was 1,000-percent correct—the bill was for the exact same price as if I had never put a vacation hold on my newspaper delivery.
 
I called Newsday right up on the phone, looking for an explanation, and within moments I was speaking to a customer service representative.
 
“I put a vacation hold on my newspaper and the bill does not reflect this, and is the same price as if I had not put the hold on,” I said.
 
The customer service representative took a moment to look up my account, and her reply was this:
 
“The reason that the vacation hold does not appear on your bill is that the vacation hold is only for delivery of the paper. Since you have online access to the newspaper, you still have to pay for it as per normal.”
 
My reply was swift and quick:
 
“I never agreed to this, never heard of this … why put a vacation hold on the newspaper if I am still going to have to pay for it? When was this new rule publicized, because I never heard of it.”
 
“You have online access, so you have to pay for that access when you are away.”
 
“Look, the last thing I want to do is to read Newsday while I am away on vacation. I never once even looked at anything related to Newsday during the week I was away.”
 
And then, with all that I was going through on this one particular Monday, I let the customer service representati9e have it but good:
 
“I have been a subscriber to this newspaper for decades, and when I put a vacation hold on the newspaper, not only don’t I want the newspaper delivered I don’t want to see the newspaper in any form when I am away.
 
“I want my bill adjusted and I want it done now because I know how the print news business is going right now, and I will stop my subscript[ton right now if you don’t readjust my bill to reflect my time away from home without the newspaper.”
 
She then told me that they have a plan that when one puts a hold on the newspaper delivery, it also can reflect that online access will also be taken away for that period of time, and she would put that on my account—
 
And thus, my bill lessened by more than $40.
 
Nonetheless, this is a scam to get you to pay for the newspaper even when you don’t want it or need it,
 
As a regular subscriber for seven-day delivery, I have never seen this new wrinkle ever discussed or mentioned.
 
Yes, I had not been on vacation for three years, so perhaps this was instituted during the pandemic, so no one would know about it, as we were all so buried by other things during that period--and who was taking a vacation anyway during this time?
 
This is something that was simply dumped on the unsuspecting customer without their knowledge or approval, and I bet that some people don’t even realize that they have been scammed … scammed by their own local newspaper, of all things.
 
Be aware of this, because it probably isn’t just Newsday alone which is dumping this on subscribers, and I will bet other newspapers are doing this …
 
And you wonder why dozens of print newspapers go out of business each year.
 
My own local newspaper trying to scam me … what’s next on the horizon?
 
What’s black and white and read all over?—or should that actually be “red,” the color they turned when I caught them red-handed trying to scam me?
 
I just don’t know anymore, I just don’t know.
 
All the scams … err … news that’s fit to print … indeed. 

Rant #2,963: The (NEW) Birds and the Bees

"Let me tell ya

About the birds and the bees
 
And the flowers and the trees
 
And the moon up above
 
And a thing called love.”
 
I am sure you remember that song by Jewel Akens, “The Birds and the Bees,” but what I am going to “tell ya” is not about “love,” but the “new normal” that we are right in the middle of, which is described by one word:
 
INCOMPETENCE.
 
And if I never knew what that word meant before yesterday, I certainly know what it means now.
 
With what I went through on a variety of levels, yes, I surely do know what the word means, and it doesn’t have a blessed thing to do with “love.”
 
As you know from yesterday’s Rant, my son received 84 separate letters from the New York State Social Services Department related to food stamps, or what they now call SNAP, simply because food stamps has such a negative connotation.
 
Anyway, as you also know, while each of the letters said the same exact thing, the dollar amounts on the letters ranged from $16 up to more than $200 that he had left on his account, even though his account was closed out about a year ago because he was making too much money ... believe me, you can't piss in a pot with the scads of money he is making, but--
 
I simply called Social Services looking for some answers, as to why we were told that we could not use the program anymore and why we received 84 separate letters telling us that our son, in fact, could still use the program as far as the money that was on the card would take him.
 
The first call at 8 a.m. in the morning led to calls throughout the day, not just to our local Social Services office,, but to those in Suffolk County and even in Albany.
 
Why you ask?
 
Because no one would pick up the phone.
 
And I do mean no one.
 
I called throughout the morning into the early afternoon, and not a single person would pick up the phone.
 
I left message after message, was disconnected several times, was given phone numbers that did not work on the actual letters that I received, and I wasted hours trying to speak to someone, anyone, about this problem.
 
Finally, in the afternoon, I did speak to someone in Suffolk County, who of course, told me that he couldn’t help me because my case was in the neighboring county.
 
He gave me a number that I did not have, so I called that number, and was disconnected, of course.
 
And then, through a complete stroke of luck, I mis-dialed a number, and I actually spoke with someone who not only looked up my son’s account and found it to be, in fact, closed out, but also gave me a couple of numbers to call, and who also alerted me that the number of the person who handled my son’s case was incorrect, even though that was the number that was on all of the 84 letters that I received.
 
I called each and every number that he gave me, but I found that not only did no one pick up the phone, but their message machines only gave me a short time—like 60 seconds—to state my case, so not knowing this, I had to repeat the same story in a truncated fashion about 15 times to cover each phone number I was given.
 
Meanwhile, the main number to contact the department was full and would take no more messages.
 
Then one of the numbers the gentleman gave me hit pay dirt, or so I thought.
 
I got a woman on the phone,, and in the middle of explaining why I was calling, she interrupted me and said, “Everyone is calling about SNAP.”
 
She then would not let me continue what I had to say, constantly interrupting me and telling me that she could not help me, “… because I have a load of people to take care of.”
 
Then why did you pick up the phone, if you are so busy? Isn’t helping people part of your job description?
 
She was rude and extremely nasty to me, yelling at me on the phone and hanging up on me.
 
I, of course, called her back, and I heard her say before she took the call, “It it’s that guy again … !” right out loud … and I guess I was “that guy” she was referring to,
 
And yes, when she was screaming and hollering at me, I told her she was incompetent and left it at that.
 
I figured that I would have to actually visit the office in person, with my 84 letters in tow, and I was planning to do that on Tuesday morning, but--
 
At about 3:30 in the afternoon, after calling about 25 different phone numbers, someone called me back … and yes, as I picked up the phone,  I heard that other woman in the background exclaim, “Oh, you’re not calling that guy … ?”
 
Well, yes she was.
 
Now I had this other woman on the phone, and she would not let me get a word in edgewise.
 
She said that yes, my son’s account was closed, but she would not tell me why I ws told it could not be used anymore and now that it could be used, how much my son had in his account that still needed to be spent in a short period of time.
 
I asked her how much was in—yes, she cut me off right there, and said that he did not use the card for four months, so he has money from that period in there.
 
“How come we were told that we could not use—?”
 
Again I was cut off before I could finish my question.
 
“How come I received 84 separate letters--?”
 
In a gruff voice, she said to me, “I don’t know … it has to do with the person handling your case, Ask her.”
 
“I tried to ask her, but the phone number I was given was wrong.”
 
“That is not my problem. The machine spews out these things. We have no control over them. Go ask whoever was handling the account the reason for it.”
 
In other words, they took absolutely no responsibility for their obvious mistake, a mistake that we, as taxpayers, are paying for, perhaps on a daily basis for all we know.
 
So people, a simple 49-cent letter just cost you more than $40 in postage and no one knows why … and you think that I am the only one who this happened to? I will bet you dollars to donuts that I wasn’t the only one who received this blizzard of mail in my mailbox the other day, and no one knows why, or even takes responsibility for it.
 
Then the woman completely changed her voice to me, from gruff to tender, in telling me that there are a lot of SNAP scams out there, and to be careful, because the government will not pay back any SNAP money that is lost that way.
 
I told her I would be careful, thanked her for her time—I actually thought I was talking to two different people as her voice changed so much—and I hung up the phone.
 
My head was spinning, but through that department’s ineptitude and my own personal drive and persistence, it might have taken me nearly eight hours to get an answer, but I got one.
 
And I also got a reality check, too.
 
This is truly the “new normal.”
 
I have seen it happen all around me, from governmental workers to people running for political office to even fast food employees.
 
Many people do not take the least pride in their jobs anymore, do not care about a job well done.
 
They simply do not care anymore …
 
So get used to it, the “new normal” is—
 
COMPLETE AND TOTAL INCOMPETENCE.
 
And what is worse, there is nothing any of us can do about it.
 
There is a part two to what I went through yesterday, a separate incident that is part of a scam that I will tell you more about tomorrow.
 
Yes, yesterday was quite a day.
 
My ears are still ringing.

Rant #2,962: Question of Temperature

OK, this has gotten to be ridiculous.
 
In my summer of disenchantment, where everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, we received the latest wrinkle of this wrongness on Saturday, and it is bewildering to say the least.
 
As you know, my son is considered to be disabled by New York State and thus, there are programs and services that he gets and can get based on his needs.
 
Like millions of other Americans, he had been eligible for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is commonly known as the Food Stamp Program.
 
This was based on his disability and the amount of income that he has, and he received a minimum amount from the government for this each month, because his income was too high, believe it or not.
 
Anyway, the government has been cutting down SNAP for the past few years, due to many scofflaws and misuse of the program’s dollars.
 
Last year, I received a letter in the mail from Social Services alerting me that my son was making too much money, and that he could no longer get SNAP.
 
(Just as an aside, between his salary and his Disability Social Security, he makes an amount per month that you would barely have enough money to go to the bathroom with, if you know what I mean.)
 
So as any good person looking over my son’s welfare would, I questioned this determination, and I was flat out told by Social Services that I should “be proud” that he did not quality for the program anymore, because that basically meant that in the eyes of the government, he was making too much money, and “making too much money” is always a good thing, right?
 
We were told what his cutoff date was, and that last time we used his SNAP money was probably in the fall, where we used his money to purchase bottled water for him, pretty much what we used the money for since they were giving him less money than you could buy a Whopper meal at Burger King each month (something you can’t purchase using SNAP, but I think you get my point).
 
So the months went on, my son continues to work, and we don’t even think about SNAP, because we were told via letter and via a Social Services representative that he isn’t in the program anymore.
 
And then came the mail on Saturday …
 
We received notification through the mail that our son had money in his SNAP account, and since he didn’t use the account approaching 244 days, he would lose the money if it wasn’t used by the end of September.
 
OK, perhaps my wife and I miscalculated or we were told the incorrect date to stop using SNAP, so perhaps all we have to do is use the money one more time and that would be that.
 
No problem …
 
But that itself is not the problem.
 
The problem is that on Saturday, our son set what most certainly is a Guinness World Record by receiving this information in 84—yes, count them, I certainly did—84 separate letters affirming the same thing.
 
And the selection of the 84 letters that he received that I opened contained letters in not just English, but in other languages like Spanish, and they all have different dollar amounts related to how much is still in our son’s SNAP account, anywhere from $16 up to over $200.
 
So obviously today, I have to contact Social Services, which is akin to contacting the President of the United States for a one-on-one interview.
 
I have to ask then a few obvious questions:
1) Is our son still on the program, even though we were told that he was not many months ago?
 
2) If he is either on the program or has excess money in his account, what is the exact dollar amount that he has in that account?
 
And the penultimate question—
 
3) WHY DID WE RECEIVE 84 SEPARATE LETTERS ALERTING US TO THIS SITUATON?
 
If you wonder where your money as taxpayers goes, the 84 letters we received about this cost taxpayers more than $40 to send out, when one alert would have cost us 49 cents.
 
So yes, that is where the money you pay for taxes each year goes … right into the garbage pail.
 
I mean, can this summer get any more bizarre—or frustrating—for my family and I?
 
I can’t even go to the mailbox without shaking.
 
More on this tomorrow, I hope.