Category: California

Posted on

From the “You have to be Fucking Kidding me” pile

I was a BAAADDDD BOY!
 
Or so the California Employment Development Department thinks.
 
A couple of weeks ago I misplaced the form you’re supposed to fill out and mail to them so that you can claim your unemployment payment.
 
I lost my mind trying to find that damn piece of paper, praying that I hadn’t shredded it by accident and knowing that I couldn’t reach EDD by telephone to ask for a replacement. I was debating if I should go on the EDD web site and try to reopen my claim.
 
When I did find the form, I immediately filled it out and mailed it with great relief.
 
Today I get a form letter from EDD that says the want to have a phone interview between 1pm  and 3pm.
 
OH SO NOW WE CAN TALK ON THE PHONE?
 
This letter is dated 9/8/2011 and probably didn’t go out until 9/9/2011 & I received it Today… the date of their desired conversation. 
 
They’re very official and apparently concerned about my tardiness.
 
They printed interview instructions on the back of the letter…

And here is where I’m such a BAAAADDDD Boy! I’m as much annoyed by the poor use of English as I am by the silliness of this whole thing.

“During the interview you may be asked some or all of the following questions: 

Not mailing you claim form within the required time limits.    

     When did you mail your claim form?    

     Why did you send it in after the return date shown on the form?“

 
WTF?
 
The form always says it is to be mailed on SUNDAY. Really? Since the US mail doesn’t run on Sunday, the form is ALWAYS mailed after the date specified.
 
As to when I mailed it… well that may be legitimate as a quality control measure to make sure that they’re not losing mail in their mail room.
 
My points are these… 
 
I know I can’t get EDD to answer their fucking phones. 
 
There is little one can do to communicate with them except by going to one of their offices and spending all day waiting to speak to a representative, who probably can’t or won’t answer your questions.
 
I have yet to find any information about what one should do if you’re out of the state for more than two weeks, for example if you were driving to Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Minnesota, and Texas to attend a number of interviews in those states.

This scenario is quite possible since High Technology companies and workers are LEAVING California as fast as they can. As one of those workers, I have to follow the employers.

 
This doesn’t even begin to address what one should do regarding any specialized training. For example, I’d like to attend a SCUBA school in Ft Lauderdale, FL. The School is 2 months or more long, how the hell do I file unemployment forms from there?
 
EDD claims that their electronic payment system is more efficient and cheaper to implement, BUT they are still dependent on the unemployed person physically being at home to file a claim and they’re still sending little pieces of paper.
 
As usual, California is attempting to SCREW the citizens that have paid for the services. Meanwhile giving free and easy access to those same services to people who have contributed little or nothing to the system.
 
And the games that they play increase defaults and foreclosures instead of helping Californias stumbling economy.
 
This is why FOR years I have wanted to get the fuck out of this state. I’ve stayed out of respect and love for my better half. But it’s coming down to a decision between my personal survival and the relationship.
 
You know what?
 
I’ll choose my personal survival, EVERY FUCKING TIME.
 
In most relationships the individuals survival is not at odds with the continuance of the relationship. Since apparently I do have that conflict… perhaps there’s a message there.
Posted on

One of the ways I relax

Took a long drive yesterday This was my first time on hwy 2 since it reopened.

The road was partially closed for 4 or 5 years. At it’s highest point it’s about 7000 ft. One very bad winter, the snow, ice, and rockslides caused a large section to slide down the mountainside. CalTrans opened as much as they could in the Summer but it wasn’t open to La Canada.

I used to take it home sometimes from work. It’s not as fast as the Freeway (well come to think of it, in rush hour traffic… it might be faster!) but the scenery is beautiful and if you’re someone that likes to drive, it’s a great road to forget about the work day on.

I took a few pictures but it really was the wrong time of day to get nice shots. I couldn’t resist a picture of the road, it’s new and smooth.
This is the kind of road my car was built for.

Drove all the way to La Canada from Wrightwood, it was a great drive! I had the top down, the road to myself and it was sunny & beautiful.

Coming back from La Canada right at the base of hwy 2,  I watched a young deer saunter across the road.

He was at least a 4 point buck, once he crossed the road he paralleled it for a bit. I drove by slowly, keeping an eye on him.

My concern was that he might panic and dart back into the road ahead of me then both of us would have a bad day.

I don’t think California lets you keep what you kill… the image of a deer strapped across the front of my car is amusing. The further thought of the cost to repair the inevitable body damage is not!

As I got even with him, he started to panic a little… when I realized he was trying to get ahead of me, I accelerated away. He disappeared into the trees a second or two after I passed him.

I wish I’d been able to grab the camera and snap a few pictures of him, he really was beautiful. But paying attention to the road took priority.

Seeing that deer made my day. Between him, the drive, and the sun on my skin I returned home very contented.

Gotta do stuff like that more often.

Posted on

Alright Now I’m starting to get Annoyed.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the stupidity of the California Employment Development Department and their debit card as payment mechanism.

Well here’s the follow-up to that piece.

I got the pretty EDD card in the mail.

Like all credit cards you have to activate it.  There was an 800 number and a web address on the card. I typed in the web address, answered their questions and ended up having to create another online account so that I could figure out what the hell the balance on the card was.

I’m trying to simplify my life not complicate it. Yet another URL/Password combination is heading in the wrong direction.

Thus far, since I’ve begun dealing with EDD / Unemployment I’ve actually ADDED 3 new web addresses and passwords to the 90 or so that I already have.

After signing up with Bank of America & providing them with a lot of my personal information. By the way Bank of America is NOT my bank for a number of reasons which I will not get into right now. I was able to see the available balance on the card.

EDD withheld 1 week even though I’d been unpaid for three weeks, I’ve never understood that. Since it’s Unemployment insurance, shouldn’t they start paying on the date of loss? That’s the way other insurance companies pay.

In any case there was $450 available so now what do I do? In reading the supplied paper work and the instructions on the web, it appears that I have 3 choices.

I could PAY BofA  $15.00 for the privilege of being forced to use them and request and “Emergency” transfer of funds to another bank

I can set up a specified transfer of X amount to another institution.

I can set up a transfer of the available balance to another institution.

The “Normal” transfers require 2 days to process.

This got me to thinking

The reported California Population 37,000,000
The reported Unemployment rate is 11.8%
That says that the number of unemployed people on the EDD roles is something like 4,366,000

If the Payment per person is $450, (I know it’s not. The payment amount is variable dependent on how much you made, and how much you’ve contributed to the system. I’d imagine a standard deviation calculation would be more conservative. On the other hand in my entire career, I’ve never been paid less than the maximum payment per week so I’m going with the Max.)

That means that BofA is processing $1,964,700,000 Per week.

Since Unemployment is paid every 2 weeks BofA is getting a pretty hefty rolling influx of cash to play with.

I was thinking about the “Your funds transfer may take up to 2 days” and realized that if B of A was playing the short term interbank loan game with only half of that money they must be turning a pretty good profit.

My figures aren’t terribly accurate, and lord knows my math skills suck! But follow this line of reasoning, and remember that this profit is being made ON THE BACKS of desperate people trying to pay their bills and stay out of default.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Half of the people who are unemployed elect to transfer their entire balance to their home financial institution.

That’s $982,350,000

Now apply the overnight interbank loan rate 0.7368 (Which appears to be the current rate. I wasn’t able to locate in a quick Google search what the ACTUAL rate is today. I suspect I wasn’t asking the right question.)

In any case if you take the $982,350,000 and charge an interest rate of 0.7368 you get $7,237,954

Not a bad return for 1 night… But since it takes BofA 2 days to complete the transfer you could double it to $14,475,908 in profit.

Then consider that California pays unemployment twice a month, and you’re looking a BofA making $28,951,816 per month.

Maybe a little more since I’m sure they let the interest earned “ride”. That’s a pretty good deal for BofA. I find it difficult to believe that it would cost them anywhere near that amount in overhead.

So does California get any part of the profit? Over the course of a year that would add up.

If California EDD got a small taste… IT MIGHT BE ENOUGH FOR THEM TO ANSWER THE PHONE!

Another item of interest is that EDD sent me via mail, another form to fill out for the next unemployment payment.  Before all this debit card bullshit, the form asking if you looked for work over the last 2 weeks contained the check for your previous claim.

Since EDD had to mail you a form to fill out, it made sense that the check was part of the form. After all they’re sending you paper anyway why not use the same envelope and get a two fer out of it?

The form still has the spot where they used to print the check, it’s blank now. You still have to detach it except now you throw it away instead of taking it to your bank and depositing it. If this is an example of how “Green” our state is, I’ll take wastefulness…

Trying to comply with the new system…

On July 25, I started the transfer. I got a confirmation email from BofA stating that they’d received the request.

Yesterday this notice appeared in my checking account.

 07-27-2011      Transaction COMMENT /  DEP PRENOTIFICATION FROM BANK OF AMERICA   0.00

Now I know that they have the right account number for the transfer.

It’s July 28… By my count July 25, to July 28 is Three days… Not two days… And you can be DAMN sure the bank would be charging me late fees if I pulled the same stunt.

—————————————————–

So EDD and Bank of America, 
I have this simple question for you…

WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY!?!?