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View Full Version : Why aren't dealers' "Cash for Clunkers" rebates getting processed?



Little-Acorn
09-22-2009, 11:46 AM
Interesting story about a woman who applied for a temporary job processing Cash for Clunkers vouchers for the government. Car dealers have been complaining that the vouchers were being rejected for trivial reasons, and the few payments that were made at all, were very late.

The woman describes going through day after day of little or no work, inoperative systems, and filthy conditions, with supervisors mostly absent and very hard to find.

Company spokesmen (who were not there) say none of it happened.
Leftists (ditto) will probably agree out of hand - anyone who says things they don't like, is lying.

It sounds like a typical government program. Supervisors know they will never be checked, so they do little or nothing. Employees quickly take on the same attitude.

And these people say they should be the ones running your Health Care.

Excerpts here. Read the full story at the URL below.

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http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110531

(snip)

She attended a job fair on Aug. 31 and was hired through Astyra Corp., a minority-owned staffing company.

"We were told that we would be working on the Cash for Clunkers programming, examining all of the documents that the government had received from dealers all over the country," Willey told WND.

The form requested direct deposit information, signature on a confidentiality agreement and background check, tax information and two forms of identification.

Willey said, "Some people did not have two forms, and I heard one recruiter say, 'We will work with you on that.'"

She asked a woman who interviewed her what she would need to do before beginning her new position.

"When I asked if I needed to take any kind of test, the answer was, 'No,'" Willey said. "She told me to report for work the next day at 4:30 p.m. When I asked if I had to pass a background check before I started, she said, 'No.'"

However, Rivera said, "That's absolutely not true. Every single temporary employee who was hired went through a background check. If the background check did not clear, then they were released. They were not allowed to work on this program."

While human resources required a strict dress code for the position, she said she was shocked by the clothing and conduct of other candidates who were interviewed:

"I was the only one dressed for a job interview. Everyone else had on jeans and T-shirts. Most women wore flip-flops. One woman was barefoot. The women were dressed extremely unprofessionally, in jeans and very revealing tops. A lot of them wore T-shirts that barely covered their stomachs. What I noticed most were the foul mouths of everyone around me."

(snip)

The following day, on Sept. 2, employees waited outside from 4:30 p.m. until 6 p.m. to get into the building.

"Once inside, we waited another 30 minutes to sign in 'so we would get paid,' Willey recalled. "I noted that it was written on the piece of paper that our work day started at 4:30. We then waited in line at the 'badge table' to get our badges. When I got there, I had no badge. I finally got to my desk at about 6:45 p.m., where I sat with nothing to do until 10 p.m."

The employees waited for their user IDs and passwords to access the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS. Meanwhile, they were being paid $14.71 an hour "to do absolutely nothing," Willey said.

"There was not a supervisor to be found," she said. "Because I was bored to death, I read a newspaper and a book."

At 10 p.m., more than five hours after signing in, she said the employees were still being paid to remain idle. Willey and another employee went to find a supervisor.

"When we finally found one, we told her we wanted our user IDs and passwords so we could get to work, but she was too busy ordering out," she said. "At 10:20 p.m., we finally tracked down someone who had a list of our user IDs and passwords. I tried to get in and was ultimately locked out of the system. At 11:30 p.m., I found another supervisor and told her my problem. She told us she would look into it, but we couldn't find her again. We were told to go home at midnight, but that we should put 12:30 a.m. on our timesheets."

Rivera told WND, "It's very likely that she went through four or five hours of training. There was about two or three hours of onboarding to make sure that they were familiar with what they were about to be doing. A lot of employees all had to be trained at the same time, and there were different waves of that process that were going on."

Willey stopped by the security room to request her badge before leaving. A woman told her the badges were ready but that she could not have hers yet.

"I told her that we were told that we would have to wait another hour and a half the next day to get in, and I asked if she would reconsider giving them to us," Willey recalled. "She told me, 'No, because there were four bags of them,' and she didn't want to go through the bags. I asked if we could look ourselves or help her look because we wanted to get into the building to start working, but she again said, 'No.' When I asked why, she said, 'No.'"

On Sept. 3, Willey said she waited almost two hours to get into the building and collect her badge.

"Once again, I was unable to sign in to CARS," she reported. "My desk was filthy. On my way to the bathroom to get paper towels to clean my desk, I went in search of a supervisor to ask for help with signing in. When I finally found one, he told me that he couldn't help me and I should go to the other side and look for help. I finally found one who took my name and said he would check on it and that he would be back."

Willey went to the restroom to gather paper towels to clean her desk. When she arrived, she said she was shocked at the condition of the facility.

"I found overflowing toilets and vomit all over the floor," she said.

At 9:15 p.m., Willey was still waiting for help to access the CARS system.

"Despite all of my efforts to find help, I found myself sitting at my desk with absolutely nothing to do," she said. "Most everyone around me seemed to have no problem with that. I finally started reading my newspaper while I waited."

Suddenly, she said, a supervisor appeared and admonished her for reading at her desk.

"When I tried to explain to her that there was no work and that I had nothing to do but stare at a blank screen, she ordered me to put my paper away," Willey said. "When I asked her if she would help me get into the system, she told me she could not. I folded my newspaper and put it on my desk. She reappeared and yelled at me to remove it from the top of my desk, saying that newspapers, books, etc., are not allowed on your desk."

Another supervisor appeared to help the employees with the computer problem.

"I finally got in, but was immediately locked out again," she said. "She was gone and could never be found again. My friend and I finally figured out by ourselves how to get in and stay in."

Once in the CARS system, employees were told to send an e-mail requesting assignments. Willey waited for work until 11:50 p.m., when she approved her first transaction. She ended the shift and left work only 50 minutes later.

During a 37.5-hour work week, Willey reported actually working only 14 hours – but she was paid for more than 37 hours of work.

"Two of those nights, I had no work at all," she said. "On those two evenings, when I left, I complained to two different supervisors and I got two different responses: 'Milk it, baby!' and 'Free money!'"

However, Rivera told WND, "A 37.5-hour work week was typical, but it is very unlikely that anyone was sitting around with nothing to do because there was so much work to do."

Willey continued, "After our 10:30 p.m. break, it was party time. Not a lot of people worked between 10:45 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. I will say, that there were some hard workers there, but they were all older women and a few older men."

Willey, a Level 2 reviewer who examined Cash for Clunkers vouchers after they had been checked once by a Level 1 reviewer, said the vouchers were being returned to "irate" dealers as many as seven times.

She said the vouchers are "rife with idiotic mistakes by Level 1 reviewers who are rejecting them for no reason at all, mostly because they are not paying attention."

"I am amazed at the number of vouchers that have been rejected in the last six weeks," Willey said. "Many have been rejected and returned to dealers three to seven times! And for no good reason. What is happening here is that the Level 1 examiners are so inept and lazy that, rather than take the time to closely examine and review these vouchers the way that they should, they just hit the reject or approve button without a second thought. That, of course, slows down the whole process and the dealers aren't getting paid by the Department of Transportation.

Trigg
09-22-2009, 11:52 AM
This should be a shinning examply of why the government needs to stay the hell out of healthcare.

If you want something screwed up, put the government in charge.

Insein
09-22-2009, 12:08 PM
I believe this. I worked for the IRS. We did a very similar job. Examine the 1040's and process as many as you can in a night. We did do alot more work then this description here but I can see people "milking it." While we were required to have a certain number of forms per hour and a certain quality per form, if you didn't meet those standards drastically, you were not fired. You were merely placed off to the side so not to bother other people. One guy was homeless and mentally disabled. A normal person process about 60-70 1040's an hour. He processed 10 an hour and they were usually half wrong. He smelled awful. He was rude to everyone and he wore the same clothes everyday. They couldn't fire him but they placed him off to the side away from people as much as possible. We never had to take a drug test to work there. I assume they did a background check cause they took our fingerprints. But these are government run systems.

There are levels of review because usually the first levels miss lots of stuff.