E-Service Canada

Service Canada has some actual, physical, offices.

Service Canada offices are pretty packed right now.  Mostly with people trying to do passport renewals.  The fact that they couldn't guess this and make some provision for passport renewals that doesn't block the rest of us from getting at the rest of Canada's services is annoying.  Service Canada does have some ways around this.  You can go to the website where you can find lots of information.  Probably everything except what you actually want to know.  The service Canada website will not, for example, tell you how to deal with those situations where the government of Canada has made a mistake.  At that point you have to talk to a person.  An actual person.  And the service Canada people are very helpful.  If you can get a hold of them.

A friend of mine called Service Canada and was presented with the choice to sit on the phone.  When he selected that choice (to stay on hold) the system informed him that his wait time was 19 hours and 20 minutes (apparently 500 and something people were in line ahead of him).  Since the Service Canada offices are only open for eight hours obviously he was not going to get to talk to anybody.

So there's the callback system.  Now, to get the call back system you don't call them.  The callback system isn't allowed as an option when you call Service Canada.  No, what you have to do is go to the Website.  On the Website if you swear and aver that your problem falls into certain categories then you can get somebody to call you back.

The system says it will call you back within two business days.  I selected this option on the website and gave them my home phone number.  A week and a half later they called while I was out.  And then the next day they called again while I was out, and informed me that this was the second attempt, so they were giving up.  So I set up a callback again.  This time I gave them my cell phone number.

And they called back some days later.  Of course, they don't say that they're calling from the government.  They call from a "private number," with caller ID blocked, like any self-respecting spammer or fraudster.  (You'd think they could at least fake the Caller-ID, like any self-respecting scammer or fraudster, so that it shows the Service Canada number.  Even I, and I'm not a phone phreak, know at least four different ways to do this.  But no.)  So of course I didn't realize it was the government until I found the two voice messages saying that they had called twice and now they were giving up.  So I set up a callback again, and, again, gave them my cell phone number.

This time they called back within two weeks.  They called back as I was just pulling out of the parking lot of my storage locker having opened the storage locker where my dead wife's quilting and embroidery stuff is packed in boxes.  (I had had to go and look at all of this stuff to prepare for getting rid of it.)

So now service Canada wants to talk about my issue, more than a month after I first tried to contact them.  I'm not at home; I don't have the two contradictory letters that they sent me that I want to resolve.  I give them a general gist of what the letters entail but of course I can't give them details (like how do I explain  and fill out the details of my wife's life who is now dead).  And why am I filling out these details, anyway?

So I tried my best, and the government service Canada person tried her best, but ultimately this is a very unsatisfying connection.