[racecar789]

Imagine being able to tell an app to call the IRS during the day, endure the on-hold wait times, then ask the question to the IRS rep and log the answer. Then deliver the answer when you get home.

Or, have the app call a pharmacy every month to refill prescriptions. For some drugs, the pharmacy requires a manual phone call to refill which gets very annoying.

So many use cases for this.

[TZubiri]

As costs of humanlike communications decrease, so will Sybil attacks and spam.

The IRS is notorious for resistance to tech change, don't be surprised if they unplug the phones and force you to walk in to ask your question.

What is the value add here? Save sometime for technocrats and technoadjacents for a whole of 3 years before victims of spam adapt?

Also this has been solved already just mail your question like the rest of mortals.

[ensignavenger]

It would be really nice if the IRS would ALLOW you to walk in and ask a question!

[andrew_eu]

Years ago my tax return was flagged as a possible fraud case -- I believe a direct consequence of a big data breach. I had to go into my "local" IRS office and present my passport to prove indeed it was me. Decidedly not nice.

True to form, with an appointment I waited 3 hours at the office and watched the guard staff turn away countless people. Finally saw a person, gave then my passport, and finished in a minute.

[ensignavenger]

I am going through that right now. IRS owes me 3 years of refunds, but I can't even get an appointment to see them. They hang up one when I call (after hours on hold), and won't let me just visit the local office. My current attempt is to work with my US Senators office.

[daveguy]

That is very expensive. Offices all around the country with personnel. We are going to have to fund them instead of gripe about them to get that to happen.

[ensignavenger]

Yeah, that is why I doubt it will happen. Maybe a website where you can sumbit an issue and have it resolved in a reasonable number of days would be fine.

[android521]

they would make you wait for 3 hours queueing

[beeboobaa3]

They'll just put up "captchas" or whatever.

The point if phone lines is to waste the client's time. Not to have the client waste their time.

[fosheezy]

We do this exact thing at getvibrato.com. You can schedule calls like these, or even do more advanced automation with Zapier.