>...riiight but they put the balance back to zero. The IRS might still think he actually had the money at one point. Believe me the IRS does stupid crap all the time. I'm 47 and have been audited every year since I got my first job at age 14. Reason why? Because I have a twin sister named Victoria. Our SS numbers are one digit apart and of course same birthday - so every damn year they think we are one person trying to cheat. You'd think after 33 years of this they'd get a clue. Like I said - stupid.

I just love those places where the software is designed in some kind of ivory tower and real life cases never make it into design. You get nailed by the same check every year because they never thought of creating a whitelist of exceptions.

One of the stupid cases I had was when our new street, where we were building the house, was getting phone lines. The house was about 90% finished (had roof, windows, electricity, water - but floors, heating, paint, tiles were still in the future). I went to the phones HQ to sign a contract and I said that nobody lives in the house for now, it's unfinished, nobody there during the winter, please send the bills (for the six monthly installments) to this other address.

I almost got my line dismantled (not disconnected: dismantled) because I missed a payment. I never got the bill for fourth installment, because they kept sending them to the empty house. There was a strong wind which opened the postbox and the bill just flew away. I had to charm a few older ladies to allow me to pay the interest and the installment and to convince them that this was still somehow on time. All because they (the morons who designed the app and the database) never thought of a case when the physical address of the phone line and the billing address may be different.

Or, while I was forced to use Verizon (because the rental office had some kind of deal with them), whenever I needed to talk with them, I'd have to tell the same story seven times until I got to the person who would know what to do with it. They recorded nothing, and whenever the next drone in the line would pull up my record, they'd be as ignorant as the previous one.

Or, worse, Netflix. They don't allow streaming to Serbia, probably because they don't like what they know of the status of IP here (which, i.e. their knowledge, may be obsolete, our parliament is translating laws left and right), but they keep calling me back to renew my subscription. Then I write to them, and get an automated response, and then a few months later there they go again (blogged at http://drfairday.blogspot.com/2012/12/netflixs-special-definition-of-anywhere.html)