Waiting on hold is always aggravating. But calling the Internal Revenue Service can be especially frustrating because you’re almost guaranteed a long wait time, assuming you can put a human on the line.

In the fiscal year ending September 30, a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that the IRS provided “the lowest level of telephone service [… ] Compared to prior years, only 38 percent of callers wanted or were able to speak to an IRS assistant. “(1) This lower level of service occurred despite a drop in demand, and average wait times still exceeded 30 minutes. Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas, responded to the report noting that “[r]Every single IRS employee often seems as unlikely as winning Powerball. “(2) Much of the lack of service is due to inefficiencies at the IRS and budget cuts.

It is in this environment where enQ has arrived. EnQ, a recently launched service, promises to allow users to “cut the queue” and contact an IRS agent for a fee. The concept is familiar to amusement park patrons. Disney has its FastPass and Six Flags offers THE FLASH pass. However, when applied to the IRS, I don’t find the concept very funny.

The idea of ​​someone else waiting for you on hold is not, in itself, an innovation. Several companies offer some form of this service. Virtual Hold Technology was founded in 1995 and pioneered the idea of ​​a call center calling back a customer rather than forcing them to wait on hold.

LucyPhone, founded in 2010, allows customers to call a business and then transfer the call if they are put on hold. The service calls back to the customer once a customer service agent picks up. A competitor, FastCustomer, is an application that works in a similar way. Unlike enQ, both LucyPhone and FastCustomer are free to consumers. However, the IRS has explicitly instructed its agents not to accept calls from LucyPhone, FastCustomer, or similar services.

While there are other services that try to reduce or eliminate wait times for clients, enQ is different not only in its approach, but in its methods. Callback-based services don’t actually reduce the time between when you initiate a call and when you speak to a representative; they just free you up to do other things while you wait. That’s nothing to scoff at, but enQ proposes to go one step further. The company initiates a call to the Internal Revenue Service before it has a customer to transfer the call to. Then he offers to sell his place in line. Rates reportedly range from $ 1 to $ 7 per call, depending on how long your estimated wait will be when enQ stops calling.

From a potential enQ customer’s point of view, this sounds great. As much as some airlines allow frequent fliers to call a separate customer service line or credit cards sometimes have shorter waits for elite-level cardholders, it may at first seem intuitive than those who are willing. to pay a premium can reduce or eliminate waiting times. But in fact, those short wait times come at the expense of all non-enQ clients, who have been on hold for 30 minutes or more. And unlike an airline or bank, the IRS is a government agency. Imagine how other people would take someone who gives a person $ 50 to the front of the line at the post office to take their place amid the Christmas rush. Then imagine discovering that twenty other people in line don’t even need to mail anything; they just hoped someone else would come and pay to take their places. And although I did a comparison between the enQ service and the passes offered at amusement parks, there is one key difference. In most cases, pass holders reserve time to return to a trip and skip the line. Therefore, there is a mechanism to limit the impact that pass holders have on the waiting times of others in line.

The EnQ founder claims that the volume of calls he initiates is so small that it will not appreciably affect IRS wait times. Right now, that’s probably true, as the company has only been operating since early February. However, if the service gains popularity, there is no reason to think that enQ will not expand to meet demand.

IRS wait times are a real problem that government officials should address, but enQ is prepared to make the problem worse by clogging up queues. I, for my part, will transmit what they are selling.

Sources:

1) US Government Accountability Office (GAO), “2015 Tax Filing Season: Impaired Taxpayer Service Underscores Need for Comprehensive Strategy and Process Efficiencies”

2) The Baltimore Sun, “IRS phone service has put taxpayers on hold”