Isn't it a wonderful, modern world we live in! I remember a time when real people had to deal with problems manually and they got things sorted. Now the computer says no.
When the first lockdowns came in, in Australia, they waived the usual waiting period so that those suddenly out of work from all the business closures could get straight onto Centrelink payments. Naturally, social distancing was in place, so they wanted it to all happen online and when the antiquated system crashed they thought they'd had a DDos attack. They'd severely underestimated the amount of people they'd put out of work and severely overestimated their system capacity. So instead of everyone staying home, away from each other, there were queues around the block at every Centrelink office. There were calls soon after that for programmers and computer buffs to come and improve the system and dig them out of the mire.
I hope you get the phone issue sorted soon. With waiting times like that, I'm guessing that mess ups are a regular occurrence.
@tipu curate 2
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Hey, @minismallholding.
All I know is, I spending a lot more time with tech support than I really should. Computers have significantly improved my life in so many ways, but in others, not so much.
The unemployment department here is extremely fortunate that didn't happen. I think there were plenty of issues of people not getting their federal supplemental unemployment, but as far as the state's version was concern, they were able to get that. I guess they, too, had to bring out of retirement some programmers because it's based on old COBOL. I have no idea which, but I'm going to guess COBOL-85, with the 85 corresponding to 1985.
They were given millions of dollars to update the system several years ago but didn't do it. Obviously, that didn't stop them from spending the money, though, on who knows what. :)
I probably should have called on New Year's Day, since holidays seem to have fewer customers calling in.