The wife and I have been working on getting all our documentation together to do our taxes. Yes, we’ve been procrastinating.
We discovered that we were missing a 1099 from the Social Security Agency (SSA) for her.
My first thought was we could probably find it online through the SSA website. I loaded the site up and they now have three ways to log in. Login.gov, ID.Me and a username and password. My wife set up her account before the Login.gov and ID.Me services were up and running so we tried her username and password. Got the username but she couldn’t remember her password.
OK, not a problem. I tried the “forgot password” function and the site sent us a temporary password to use. Now we’re getting somewhere. I tried the temporary password and got to a screen where they had two-factor authentication set up. They needed to send her a text message with a code she could use to log in. The only problem with this was she changed her phone number last year and the SSA site had the wrong phone number.
There was a way to update her phone number, but it required that they send her a letter in the mail with instructions on how to log in and update her phone number, along with a code to use. The letter could take up to 10 days to arrive.
OK, that wasn’t going to work.
We tried calling the SSA office. Multiple times. Every time we called them, we would be put on hold for twenty to thirty (20 – 30) minutes, then get hung up on. Finally this morning the wife got through and spoke with someone. She was going to have to go to the office and appear before them in person to get a copy of her 1099.
< heavy sigh >
So, we drove to the SSA office and got checked in. Then we sat and waited. And waited. And … waited.
An hour after we got there, the security guard on duty approached me and told me I had to go back to my car. “Huh?” I responded.
It turned out that having a multitool on your belt is a no-no at the SSA offices. So, I got up, went back to the car, dropped off my multitool and went back inside to do some more waiting. Gee, I felt more secure after that.
Ultimately it took us a little over two and a half hours to get her 1099 print out. The wife told the clerk about trying to call in and getting cutoff after twenty minutes. The clerk said with having to answer the phones, and work the front desks, and being short-handed staff-wise, they were just overwhelmed. He thanked us for being patient.
I’ve had fun before and that wasn’t it. On the other hand, that was far from the worst experience I’ve ever had, so I guess it all balances out in the end. I did get some reading done, so that was a plus.
May your duration waiting in lines be short, my Hordeling.
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