Why The Government Would Fail at Business
*RANT ALERT*
Almost every dealing I have with the government leaves me feeling angry and frustrated.
It is partly the unnecessary levels of bureaucracy they love to add to everything but more so the fact that they send you demands for money and then perversley – make it impossible for you to pay them.
Take my latest demand for tax:
I employed somebody for a while and they moved on. I was sent a demand for their tax yesterday. The letter says I can do a nil return online quoting my employer reference. The reference in the letter isn’t accepted in their site. I could call them to ask for help but in their letter they spend a long sentence explaning that since I’ve seen their number in other letters, there is no need to include it in this one!
So I want to pay them but can’t.
Two points. Never, ever leave idiots in charge of recovering money and if you own your own business, please make it super easy for your customers to pay you.
Paul Browning
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Tag:bureaucracy
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10 Comments
10 I cannot believe that last sentence. Incredible! Think of the time it took for someone to type in that sentence rather than just providing the telephone number. I?m almost speechless.
?Please make it super easy for your customers to pay you?. So true! Also, make it super easy for your customers and others to find you, and to communicate with you. How often have you been to a website and found no email address or telephone number? Or found it only after opening link after link after link. By which time you?re angry! Internet marketing 101 ? make it easy for people to do business with you!
Wouldn?t you think their letterhead or email signature line would have that information? Everyone ? check you own stuff right now.
I?d be very inclined to look up the name of the minister in charge of that agency and send that letter to him or her as an example of lunacy.
frustrating are those automatic email messages that say ?Do not reply to this message, this is from an unmonitored account? or words to that effect ? and then contain no information about what to do if you have questions. Clearly businesses, government, and ourselves have much to learn!
I find those messages infuriating ? the ones that permit no reply. We can only really control our own actions, so let?s all agree NOT to submit others to these kinds of messages.
Bureaucracy at its ?best?.
I don?t think I?ve ever seen a message like that. Amazing. There must have been a reason for it. *Someone* must have thought that message made perfect sense. I wonder what their reasoning was?
Lori, that?s taking a kind perspective and maybe a true one. We all do things that make sense to us at the moment. It might be a good idea to have a trusted person or two we can run things past for their perspective. We might be amazed how many times communications we send out leave someone at the other end of the line wondering what we were thinking.
I think Paul?s final point is the best lesson here. Make it easy for your customers to pay you (at the very least). If for no other reason, we?re in business for ourselves (or want to be in business for ourselves) to make money, no?