"for assistance in repairing our broken system to prevent these kinds of unacceptable errors from ever happening to anyone again. please go to hell" they really need to add that to their automated notices
I didn't see louis pinning that, it was more of a joke about many aspects of government, including social security disability in my case I mean I got a notice about ~owing 21,000$ to social security because I supposedly had too many assets for the past year, but not a single datapoint each month was correct the bank balances were all well above what the numbers ever were(like they intentionally tacked on 500-1000$ onto the actual balance at random or just used the wrong bank account data) and they keep refusing to admit that the savings CD's that my mother NEVER gave me control over or ability to cash are somehow assets I have direct access to, just stop lying people and the only actual issue they MIGHT have had was not listed on the notices, a FORFEIT cash payout for life insurance, not an asset I can just borrow from, a full on "give up your policy and get a one-time payout" so I requested formal external review, and have not heard back as I was promised for ~2 weeks, either they are actually double checking their errors before fighting, or they have just given up on the ruse to kick me for no reason besides illegal discrimination lets find out if I have to actually sue the US government for discrimination and negligence, won't that be a hell of fun?
@@searuxianstudios9200 yeah, I am confident I can fight it since it is literally based on 0% true records absolutely none of the numbers they gave were accurate and I have records to prove it, so it is just the stress of getting them to basically say "yes we made this decision based on completely inaccurate numbers, you will be compensated for what we took from what you rightfully are entitled to and no further action or penalization will be put on you"
No accountability. No competence. No admission of wrongdoing. No apology. I hope this series serves as a warning to ANYONE thinking of building something or investing in New York City.
Nobody seems to point out the fact that is the most scary in my opinion: There is no evidence of the false address anymore other than the recorded phone call. They deleted the evidence of mistake and wrongdoing from their system.
@@rossmanngroup The government had to check up on "Royal Mail" in the uk. Multiple Post Office Managers took their own lives because the Royal Mail company was getting them to pay out of their own pocket for computer errors they claimed were not there, and thus must be staff stealing. They even sent a pregnant woman to jail for "theft" of 50K+ which was totally their systems error! (Feijisu programmed it IIRC and timing errors meant the credit card system would loose that days bill payments, etc, and it never went through!)
The dude just straight up agreed with it just to get Louis off the phone. I hated that guy with every fiber of my being and I wasn't even dealing with him. Hollywood script writers should take notes of how this guy functions to make more believable and hateable villains. In 5 minutes of conversation I felt more anger than I ever have in a movie theater.
@@AConquerorsVendetta well somebody had to not see them, 9 had half the audience of 7 by the end of it. also, the real villains here were the directors and writers.
USA in a nutshell sugarcoating dogshit to the point even the sugarcoat layers become the same dogshit and the final forms out of proportions to the point it's like, what are we even talking about anymore wtf is this even ... Hit the hard reset and start the country over ... there is no fixing, just a hard reset
You probably work for the city, if you’ve actually watched the entire series there’s no way you would be defending the Cities behaviour and waste of tax payers money, New York is a dump and destroying its small businesses and your defending it? Definitely sounds like troll for the City.
A few things: a) He couldnt find the address because it was covered up. You scared them. b) 600 other people in the same boat could be a hell of a headache for them. c) It may be a very good idea to contact your state representive about this. The problem seems like it goes way way deeper than initial impressions.
His texas representative? NY rep won't care. Can't earn his vote. Unless a Republican in the red parts wants an anti-NY bureaucracy issue for the base.
Here is all you have to do: call civil enforcement again. Tell them the warrant ID and have them look it up. Then ask for a copy of the original bills it was based on. They will mail it and it will show the original address it was mailed to and the reason for the bill.
37:52 so. . . what boss man is saying is that any agent can create a warrant and send it to whomever they want without oversight. This smells even more like an inside job than it already did. And it stunk to high-heaven before.
Arbitrary enforcement and ad-hoc creation of administrative laws or policy are all of the markers for systemic government corruption. Welcome to the administrative state.
Even worse, anybody from any number of other agencies can as well. But the tax dept acts as a shield and it just shows that it's from them, and they know nothing about it. Something about that has to be illegal, unconstitutional, habeas corpus etc etc.
Jesus Christ the contempt and self importance is reeking off that guy. The stupidest part is he probably doesn't realise that he's helping bleed new york dry or more insidiously is completely ok f cking people over.
Louis, you should probably give the Office of Court Administration a call, probably starting with the Internal Audit Services and/or Inspector General. The fact that they kept trying to serve an empty PO box and nobody noticed or did anything about it is something they will probably want to know about.
It is a giant flaming violation of the 14th amendment to improperly serve someone and then do what they did to Louis....like cartoonishly unconstitutional lol so yeah agreed.
As a State Gov employee boss, I can safely say none of them actually care about helping you and thats why half of this is a massive pain. I ask higher ups "how do i fix this for a taxpayer?" And they respond with "thats not your problem have them contact customer service"
The funny thing is, there is no customer service. There was no customer. There was an order to pay a certain amount of federal reserve notes under the threat of violence.
the old "kick the ball between the departments until the customer grow tired and hang up" thing.. They have done that to me a few times but i keep calling until i get a answer.
@@ElJosher No personal accountability cupled with no justice system (or more exacty a justice system that costs tens of thausands to address simple problems ) cupled with a huge bureaucracy and the ability to use force against citizens. Why do you think the founding fathers wanted a small minimal state. This is why, a big state always abuses citizens. It's not a matter of if...it's a matter of when.
Dude. Damn. That closing statement from the guy translates to "the problem went away, be happy and don't look into it further". Both a calming tactic and a veiled threat rolled into one. I am not one for conspiracies but this is definitely something that has been done to you on purpose, and how it has been covered up on purpose. I'm sorry you had to deal with this.
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to [edit: or adequately explained by] stupidity. A bug in a DB script that someone chose to not clean up after so they wouldn't have to admit to their boss that they £¢€¥ed up? That sounds more probable than Louis being on some "hit list". But as for evidence going missing at this point? *That* doesn't happen out of stupidity.
Make it happen. I'm serious - the audience is where the power lies, not with the youtuber. As I've been telling you every single time a vote on a right to repair bill comes up in a state. Do keep in mind that over 50 warrants for the same amount, against 50 other businesses, were filed the same week mine was filed. There are dozens of people who had their business or livelihood fucked with as a result of this incompetence. I don't have the financial resources to fund a lawsuit or to seek justice - maybe one of the other 50 people who got screwed does? One way to find out.
@@rossmanngroup i completely disagree with you, you’ve got a following that I’m sure would donate to a legal fund of you started one. I’m positive that there are firms that would take this case as I’m positive it would go in your favor.
Louis, the bright side of it is that without ALL this mess you might have never left NY! This series is as valuable as it can get, and as a public figure, I'm sure it will help A LOT of people not to fall in that trap, or to have the courage to get the hell out of there. THANK YOU for taking the time and putting the effort to do all this. Besides of what was lost, there's surely much more to gain where and how you are right now. You've done enough already. THE SYSTEM, ANYWHERE will ALWAYS be the WORST associate, the one taking everything and not providing anything in return.
louis i wouldn’t wish this punishment of sitting on a phone for this long talking to these imbeciles, but goddamn this series has been my favorite content as of recent
The problem is not that they are all imbeciles, it's that the system seems to be convoluted to the point ridiculousness. Most probably due to layer upon layer of added complexity over the years. How you sort out such a monumental mess is difficult without making things much, much worse. As for the cause of the original problem: Probably someone somewhere typed in the wrong ID ref and trying to find out who, particularly after such a long time, is a lesson in futility. You can certainly give it a go (and Louis has), but very unlikely to succeed. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try if you feel strong enough, mind.
I worked for one of the biggest insurance companies in my country for a few months taking calls. Got a customer, that ended up being 2 customers, as a fired employee combined 2 policies because they could not be bothered generating a new id number/policy number. :P Our system was great, and I could personally check the fired employees previous work, a year later, from my end, and see what they'd done to policies... this is why should I? I was not HR, training, compliance, management, etc. All those departments were running around, giving people stupid paperwork, sitting in their ivory towers coming up with more pointless paperwork, scratching each others backs... and then not doing their own checks and balances on themselves when they fired staff. I sorted the policies, then got reprimanded from HR for taking too long on the call (my line manager was happy with it, as they *also* had to spend time sorting it, and we did our best at the time with staffing and sorting the customer). Best I could have done was send them down a paperwork rabbit hole to a different department with no call time limits... but IIRC our company would not allow that (paperwork only departments were legal/claims, not customer service/amendments). So basically, I got into trouble, for doing my job better than they do theirs, and they couldn't even see that's what they were doing! :/ The company was incentivised to be ignorant and dysfunctional.
@@TechyBen yep, and if you did send them down the rabbit hole it would have no skin off your nose. now if that person happened to get a windfall of money and hire a lawyer the company would be found at fault, but the employees that caused the problem would not get any blow back. now if it were government in any shape or form then there wouldn't even be the route of a judge to say that the company was at fault, as the law would say that the customer was responsible for the government's fuck up. this is what people just don't get. it isn't about the mistakes, it is about the lack of effort to fix one's own problems due to a lack of accountability.
@@TechyBen Everything you say comes down to one simple thing, when you pay someone to do something they will need to justify the existence of their job to keep it. If the job is not tied to doing productive work then their justifications will always be based on reducing productivity. It's why as a society we need to get rid of every job that is not actually doing something productive. Making something? Your good, Helping the customer be satisfied with what they paid for? Your good, If the only thing you've done in the last year is paperwork and yelling at coworkers hit the road jack.
I sent an email to all of the major news outlets with a link to this playlist, explaining that not only was Louis was affected by this error, but that over 600 other entities as well. I also explained that Louis went through absolute hell to get the lien and warrant cleared, as well as to seek out explanation for why this happened and why he never got notification. I strongly encourage everyone to do the same. The more these outlets see this story, and hear from people about it, the more likely it will get coverage. We can't let New York (or any local, state or federal agency) get away with this sort of thing without answers and accountability.
Yah there could have been a computer glitch at that time, or some vindictive employee. How often do warrants that similar go out in that short of a time period?
@@watamatafoyu I mean a trainee with a stack of alike notices uploading them to a software could have easily done it. Like he said, after they put the information into the system it is all automated afterwards. maybe the reason the warrants are all similar is because that is the standard lean amount for that area. I just imagine a trainee had a stack of files to upload, wasn't told to link them to current files and instead created all new ones with a prefilled address which was supposed to be changed later(but didnt) and this was all just a giant mixup they are just covering up because a mixup this large is insane to departments like this.
Have the ever watched the news? Clearly you don't understand what kind of stories they like... a business getting shafted with a tax bill wouldn't even make the news at my kitchen table...
I see what Louis is doing. Instead of stewing in his own rage he is showing incompetence for everyone to enjoy. Instead of the situation happening to him he is happening to the situation
My dad always talked about how you should come up with the most beneficial framing to any situation. He's gone bankrupt twice, had 7+ surgeries, 2 joint replacements, been laid off or fired many times, and ended a 26 year marriage on horrible terms after ending a marriage with his first wife who bankrupted him & left him with five figures of credit card debt(back in the 70s, when five figures was real money!) Applying his philosophy to this situation, there are two ways to view this: 1) I was unfairly screwed out of financing for years that could've allowed me to rapidly expand my business, maybe beat out CPR/ubreakifix during crucial inflexion points. Now, I must spend hours of my time correcting someone else's mistakes. Woe is me. 2) I spent a bunch of money to buy the rights to a script to a television show, that will be funny to hundreds of thousands of people. This will be hysterical and bring laughs to hundreds of thousands of people, whose shitty days/lives/jobs will be temporarily brightened as they laugh at someone else's kafka novel. I choose 2. Always find a way to choose 2.
@@rossmanngroup honestly I feel like it is impossible for you to expand to say, maybe more than 2-3 locations in same state (maybe 20-30mi rad, where you can physically visit wothout losing sanity) if you want same standard without having to teach someone proper soldering and troubleshooting techniques. If you were backed up to say 2-3weeks on repair and you had the stock to actually maintain pace without the gears stopping (this is common theme im running into post rona year), financing loans wouldve made sense, I guess. It would have been impossible to fit more body in 186 even if you wanted to.
might there have at some point, been a Rossman Repair group inc, that went to Berwick maine that required a lean be put against it, and someone, somewhere, attributed that lean to the business "Rossmann repair group inc" instead? and the entire confusion is tha there are two businesses with which are being dealt?
@@jhonviel7381 actually he sounds like a coastal state fanboi hence his defensiveness. the reality is, this is a well known issue with democat states. dealing with a red state for decades i have never experienced this level of incompetence, corruption, or unapologetic power tripping. but keep voting democrat you idjits lol
Louis! You should have asked for a complete list of every agency that can issue a warrant through the NY State Dept. of Tax and Finance. That final boss was hinting at even more secret final bosses, hidden levels, and easter eggs!
What he meant was, it caused him (gov employee) no harm, so he sees no reason to look into anything that might be rancid and foul....like his own behavior.
I think the last call was the most helpful. He said a person doesn’t get served by anything other than mailing. They don’t care if the person or business sees it.
Exactly. To bankrupt you, we don't have to show proof you knew or we contacted you.... BUT unless you can prove that we made an error 7 years ago, we can't take your word for it, therefor you were in the wrong.
Yes I am actually surprised Louis got so upset. This last guy was not the guy who deleted the address. The lady supervisor on the prior call updated the system for both accounts ( maybe just 1 but I'd update 2) by updating the mailing address of the record with the PO box 846 record. Once that happens , and maybe a few more steps are completed, a end of day process runs , cancells the debt and sends a data file to the court to vacate the warrant. 60 days is outrageous it should take 3 days at most. 1 day to send data to court. Court system updates their warrant to vacated and sends confirmation back day 3. Simple 3 days not 60.
Those voice menus were probably designed to deter majority of cases out of sheer frustration. Mad respect for you going through all those and keeping your cool. Those voice menus are potentially epilepsy/trauma inducing... watch out
The guy you talked to at the end reminds me a lot of a guy I used to work under on a really weird volunteer project that involved open source software. I can tell you that he was always making problems "go away," and convincing the rest of the team that mistakes/issues being public or acknowledged was intolerable and would make us look bad. In his eyes we had to project confidence, appear tough, and not show weakness or accountability, and he would use that kind of tone publicly but in private he would be frantically trying to run around trying to do damage control and make people look bad. I'm ashamed to say I went along with him and trusted him a lot because he was the stronger personality... but basically, if that office is anything like the project I worked on, that is probably precisely what happened. And this guy was only acting out an authority role by behaving a certain way, he had no real power but he somehow inserted himself between me and the project leader as an extra layer and got what he wanted by making both of us think he spoke for people at a different level and mislead both of us about things. Ironically, the guy I was working under who caused all this trouble was at one point a black-hat hacker, but also a welfare recipient living on disability. He practically brags about how having no income other than disability makes it pointless to go after him for civil damages all the time now that he's no longer with the project. He seemed to act and think a lot like a bureaucrat himself, looking back. I shudder to think of how many times he would quote all these convoluted rules in a license agreement to pressure me into doing very questionable things on his behalf and thinking I had no choice...
Louis is helping people finally realize there is a pervasive lack of accountability in government. We need massive structural reforms to hold government officials and departments accountable for neglectful behavior. There must be consequences for the careless harm inflicted on innocent victims.
To do that first you need to be able held police accountable, otherwise they will crack down on citizens by the order of the goverment. Democracy was never real.
No he isn’t. This guy is a brilliant electronics tech and a talented business man. He’s also a leftist moron. He’s LEARNING, late in life, about the incompetence of government. He isn’t qualified to teach anybody about things he didn’t even believe a couple of years ago. His life experience is in New fucking York City. He voted for everything that he’s fighting today and he knows that is the case. He left because he realized - AFTER HELPING TO CAUSE THE PROBLEMS - that they cannot be fixed by voting. His political opinions are reasonably well documented. I wouldn’t stop in NYC to take a shit if my life depended on it, let alone live there for decades thinking any aspect of it is normal or OK in any way.
FYI, SCotUS ruled money is a "speech amplifier" in Citizens United vs. FEC and McCutcheon vs. FEC, meaning _money_ is protected by the First, not just political donations. Thus bribery is legal unless someone important decides they don't like you and so exercises their "speech" upon your lack of a jail cell. Good luck!
Chances are that right now these calls are the only record of this ever happening. They likely wiped the databases clean, and at this point even their own employees would be unable to find any record. You should locate the person with whom you talked about address in Maine, and get them to testify about what was in the database at the time.
Something like this. Especially if there are 600 more of these like Ross mentioned. The big weird detail is that other agencies can do this through the state?!? So who is putting the false warrants out on people?
@@tonjolley6422 seems like someone could be benefitting from this very complex and obfuscating system to ruin businesses or individuals, 600 isnt a very large number but its also quite high for a system to be randomly assigning wrong addresses to. Id like there to be a class action lawsuit
I think you are giving too much credit to their competence. Wiping databases requires coordination, planning and skill. I would say its unlikely at this point.
My spidey-sense is tingling on this, it sounds like you found the guy that made the mistake, but their "system" is so buggy that they simply blame it instead of themselves... fwiw, it's probably as far as you can take the issue, beyond this is just going to be an insane amount of red tape
From the second I heard his voice on the phone, I had this weird feeling that it was him. The way he speaks. It's like a movie where someone leaves your apartment after murdering your wife, right as you're walking home from work. You're both walking down the same street at the same time, in different directions; and for 2-3 seconds, you catch each other's eyes just long enough to feel weirded out or uncomfortable, but _you don't know why_ until you get home. Then it clicks. This is that feeling. I can't prove it. It is just a feeling, and I will admit that - but I feel like someone in that room, if not him specifically, is who fucked me.
@@rossmanngroup I feel for you Louis! When I was working insurance in a call centre, I helped everyone except 2 customers. The first hung up every time I said "well we can do this for you, but first I need your address" they hung up before giving it to me, cost they thought I already knew them XD The second it was a computer error, unfixable, so I just sent them to our refund department. :P
@@rossmanngroup can you please for the love of all that is holy sue that rat infested dump for the material damage they caused you by preventing your business growth
There is no way I would have survived going through this, all those calls, all those menus designed to irritate you and make you hang up, all of the lies, no accountability. I would have had an aneurysm. Your level of self-control is off the charts, my man. You deserve a goddammed medal for your perseverance and self-restraint.
Honestly this is not related to just NYC state, but also to corperations. They hide costumer service numbers or add hurdles for you to overcome (long queue times and menu's) just so they hope you bugger off...
All of it designed to take advantage of the fact that we're lazy, we conserve energy wherever possible. This is what most fines/fees/licences are based on, you'll just pay so as not have to go through the hassle of jumping through their [intentional] hoops heh
What Louis is doing is incredibly important on so many levels and for so many reasons. This is just straight up educational material for everyone watching.
It is very likely that the technical term of this "warrant" is something entirely different. The word "warrant" is likely used to scare the hell out of business owners.
I didn't get that vibe to be honest, actually with a lot of the people Louis has spoken to, especially the ones that are helpful, it sounds like they may have hasbergers? I actually think when this guy said "other agencies", he was hinting that they were most likely the source of this, I get why Louis didnt chase him up for a list, but that probably would be the next step in identifying the culprit
I wonder if taken to the press if this would be a huge story on inside tax corruption. This “mini documentary” series alone is probably a valid reason they were suspecting it was going to be published. If any real audit rains down on them I wonder if there is any logs of them changing around records?
The press doesn't snitch on their own. Even if a smoking gun is found in a bulletproof documentary, it will just be delisted and ignored until it falls from consciousness. They've done it a million times before.
Too complicated for "news", too political for a non-partisan investigation. Unfortunately the only ones you can contact with stuff like this is the opposition, which will look at it as a case study of what they should do in the states they control.
What I've been able to get from watching these series of videos and from my own experience (That is in Oklahoma, I've never dealt with NY in any capacity), is that: "YOU screw up, it's YOUR PROBLEM (No argument there), but if THEY (GOV) screw up it's YOUR PROBLEM." I wish I could wash my hands of screw ups and gross negligence like State Governments do, but no I live in the reality that I am bound to my faults and the faults of others. To "H" with the state New York, you are better off in just about any other state!
As someone who used to work in customer service, I can tell you that the representatives you were satisfied with are actually more likely to get punished. The highest valued part of the job was getting trough as many calls as possible (keeping them under 7 minutes), so when a problem does arise that can take a long time to resolve, the agent is encouraged to end the call without asking too many questions and actually helping you. For them it's better if you call 15 times so you can either give up or pursue legal action, at which point their supervisor or the legal department might actually take things seriously enough to address your issue.
Same, did like 18 months in a call centre. Fixed multiple policies from staff who literally didn't work (we could see on their records they got fired), helping 2 or 3 customers at a time sorting the paperwork. But I was 30 seconds on average a day slower than the rest working there, cos I'd take the 1 call each day no one else would (Our call tracking was amazing, and I could see who "dropped" the line "accidentally cost the signal was bad"). Of cause, cos of statistics it's pointless me telling HR, they only chased numbers in a box, not actual reality. :/
Thing is Louis is asking the kind of question that only 1 person 10 years ago would have been able to answer. Even if Rossmann does sue and their legal department decides he has a solid chance of winning, they would try to settle or just take it on the chin.
If their phone system is as defective as it appeared so far, with all the circular menus and non-existing voicemails and dead extensions, I strongly doubt they have any kind of functional call center management system integrated that would allow them to run such reports. Remember, these are all state departments, so efficiency and throughput is not a KPI for them.
The right thing to do would be to attempt to contact the owners of the other 600 businesses (as many as possible that you can get on board) and organize together. It would elevate the issue enormously if a group of 600 or so business owners came down on NY with identical taxation errors
I had something similar happen to me in Virginia. My city of residence placed a civil show cause warrant on me for not showing up to jury duty after they sent the jury duty notice to an address where I nolonger lived. This faux pas showed up on an employment screening for a job that required I obtain several SEC licenses, and needless to say I was not offered the position. It took 6 months for a judge to clear this up but the damage was done and I have repeatedly applied to work with this organization since and has been denied. In my case it was human error that caused the warrant. I asked the same questions Louis asked about the address situation because as my driving record showed that my address had been changed with the DMV 18 months before the jury summons was posted on the wrong door, but the court clerk had no answers and I was told that civil show cause warrants can be issued from the bench without service. That said, I think everyone should run civil background checks on themselves every once in a while to see what pops up
I suspect, because you started snooping around, someone deleted and destroyed everything between the time you first started checking into this until you called this guy.
Tbh I'd believe so many heads not speaking to each other is as likely. It's what happens with lots of departments, few senior operators, and (probably) little to no cross training or mission knowledge between departments. Could happen to any government, vigilance and minimizing government expansion (even to serve it's own prior expansion) is key.
You're probably right. And I bet it was that one dude's boss, the woman. The one that told him about the address and changed it. That's probably why the last guy here said there was no record of a Maine address. They probably changed it and deleted the history for plausible deniability.
At 7:08 the smile Louis puts on says so much about this situation. It’s as if he is saying without saying “I hate this crap, I despise this system but I will sacrifice my sanity to get to the bottom of it. Professionally of course.”
There was definitely something about this person voice. Man did I feel that keyboard toss at the end. I can only extend my deepest condolences to you Louis. I can hardly fathom what it must feel like to realise not only that there was this hidden thing hangin over your head, helping to prevent growth or financing. But that now that you’ve discovered it, you’ve gotten to the final boss and there’s apparently no recourse or even further knowledge as to what or how this happened. My heart goes out to you and anyone else in this predicament
Being probably one of the most civil people to call in an to get treated like that screams malpractice or negligence from those state agencies. Very disturbing to witness, and scary to look at if you’re in a similar situation
Louis, I actually laughed out loud when you took the deep breaths. I feel ya man. it is a run around and no way out. Ouroboros the snake eating its own tail.
@@rossmanngroup I mean TBF he isn't payed enough to care. But when that happens where a state "collects taxes" like this because people just want it over with they make money on that and if they are ever caught the court system just slaps their hand with like a 5mil fine that the scheme made 100mil on. Its not right and that is always happening and it will take a major shift in peoples thinking to change that.
Seriously, at this point it's an entire system filled with people dodging accountability. This would be fascinating to see addressed in a court of law.
The court will dismiss the case because the court is also part of the government, even if it tries to be independent. If you were to find someone in govt guilty you're asking to get in the headache.
Yeah, I used to wonder why TF so many Americans are so opinionated against taxation. Not wondering anymore with all that tax inefficiency, organisational bloat and rot/corruption, inexcusable incompetence and unaccountability etc.
Do you notice how the entire time he debated your public records requests and he did fix it but they act like wolves now it's all fixed up so no big deal and like you just said seven years of my life I got deprived of things that I could have had because this was hanging over my head and they just act like well we don't have to get to the bottom of it cuz now it's fixed nobody has ever held accountable and in my mind this was completely malicious
@@rossmanngroup thanks for the response and you're doing exactly what people need to do instead of just letting it go try to get to the bottom of it and you have to be nice and you have to be polite and patient because otherwise you don't get anywhere
@@rossmanngroup I bet if people sat around and thought about it they would have a story exactly similar to yours I've had it happen in my life where I've had agencies do this to me
So the answer is: (that they are dodging accountability) they don't know but they might know someone who does and if they're the wrong people then they can direct you to the right people and the right people say they don't have that kind of access and the people with access say they don't have that responsibility and the people responsible for serving don't know and even if they did know it's not their problem and if it is their problem then there is another unknown entity who might be to blame but the important thing to focus on is that it's being resolved 🙃
God, his blame on the 'system' gave me flashbacks to my (thankfully short) work at a callcenter. Whenever something went wrong *that* was the answer we where told to give, as if it was an actual answer. Late payment? The system. Can't find X? Not us. Is there anyone who I can speak to that can actually make changes? I can transfer you to my supervisor. Can they actually do anything? No, they have the same access I do and the list of phone numbers to other departments who might be able to help is 3 years out of date, I literally could file a ticket to them on the issue but I'll be yelled at for not following the 'script'. Good riddance to that place.
We shouldn't be allowing computers to send automated warrants en masse. A warrant should be reviewed and filed by an actual lawyer that has verified all the information and put their signature on it. That will increase the burden on the state, but then they can re-think their process and come up with better solutions than getting the courts involved so quickly.
The funniest part is that the final boss tried to blame "computer automatic issue" while I 100% believe that the software would not automatically generate a random address for you.
@@beauregardheimer187 Lewis needs to not destroy himself over this. Of course the right course of action is to fight it for all of us, but he will end up broke and babbling by the end of it. For his own health he needs to work on his TX business and remember NY only as a nightmare.
This is true of the system we all live in or under. If you stand up and join the good fight they do notice and will try to cut you down! Right to repair goes directly against the agenda and draws a big target on anyone supporting it. This channel is awesome 👍 two reasons one yes I learn something, two facts truths and real, diverse and relevant topics! Stick it to NY BS. Wishing you success and thanks for sharing you have made a big difference to many people!
I think whats really scary is they have an automated tax warrant system with probably zero audit for accuracy, its a warrant printing machine that could torpedo you at any moment.
When you replace all the employees with machines, not only is there less expenses up front but there is not liability for mistakes later either because we just blame the machine for screwing up.
Louis. What you are doing for right to repair movement is amazing. With that said. I believe there needs to be a movement for small businesses that goes against to government. The government always make these mistakes, they get away with it, or use it to their advantage to continue to shake down businesses across the country. There needs to be a small business alliance that will stand up and go against the government both local, state, and federal. I’ll be glad to donate to a group tasked for that job
It's pretty much how these bureaucrats think "oh, we fucked up but it's ok because it's all going to be fixed within 90 days". The guy genuinely can't understand or appreciate that you want to at least know how the fuck up happened in the first place because it has crippled your ability to provide for yourself, your employees and grow your business for close to a decade.
The big one you missed. It fucked over his chance for happiness. Remember, they were looking for a place to buy a home together. His overworking just to keep his business afloat is really the just a minor thing. What NYC caused was the destruction of his personnel life. Hence he anger of they keyboard being thrown. You don't see Louis get angry. But this is big. And this is why. You don't get worked up like that over 1500 dollars. Its the last 1500 days that is the problem. And its gone forever.
@@JohnDoe-my5ip Pick your rate? Pick your fate. Don't take the job unless you willing to do it would be the NAVY's Motto. But I guess things have changed.
I honestly don't know how you stayed that calm, I would have lost it when he said that there's no record of the business being in Maine, and there's no address of that on file. It makes you wonder how many other businesses (not even necessarily in NY, but any state) have been shafted for loans and what not for clerical/computer errors similar to this. But, let us miss a payment on our taxes, regardless of the reasoning, and see if we're held accountable for it...I already know the answer, as I went thru that already myself (couldn't log into their computer system, couldn't contact anyone in NJ tax department, and missed a quarterly payment...but you better believe I had to pay late/penalty fees for it).
I don't think this guy is necessarily the mafia boss, but he's definitely in with the organized crime. I'm not joking. Also, was 2016 a particularly noteworthy year for you with regards to your notoriety fighting for right to repair? Like, for example, did you have any important boost in subscribers at the time? Because that might explain if they actually did this to you deliberately, the mafia that runs New York state may have taken a huge sum of money from a corporation that doesn't like you so they could ruin your life without you knowing or noticing it was happening. I'm being 100% serious.
July 2016 is when my videos went viral because Apple had a law firm named kilpatrick and Townsend reach out to me asking me to take down my videos that had schematics in them. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-F7N254MTA4Q.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aVG1WMJebg8.html I was scared; I thought I was going to get sued and be done for as a business. I responded to them saying, _I will happily take down my videos as long as you file a DMCA claim so that there is a record of who is responsible for the videos being removed, and why._ DMCA claims require that you say why you want the content removed; I wanted Apple to put *in writing* that me showing consumers where a fuse was, so they can fix their own stuff, was what they objected to. This was win win. If they don't file the claim, my videos get to stay up. My channel does not get removed, and my business succeeds at staying open. If they proceeded with legal action, it would confirm everything I have been saying for 4 years prior, that Apple does everything they can to discourage repair. It was my way of forcing their hand; either out yourselves as assholes, or leave me alone. They didn't call my bluff, and they went away. No DMCA claim. I went viral and frontpaged Reddit 3 times that month I believe. Come to think of it, all of this happened one month after I received contact from Apple's attorney in July 2016. This lien is dated August 2016. ............
@@rossmanngroup wayyy too much of a coincidence to not be sus. Stinks so bad I can smell it from halfway across the country. Definitely watch your back and keep an eye out. Thank you for everything you have and continue to do standing up for us. You're genuinely an inspiration.
Damn, this guy is a procedure book in human form. The perfect government drone...Even comes built-in with an aggravating habit of interrupting people instead of practicing "active listening techniques". I worked call centers for 10 years and trained staff for two years. If I'd had this guy in my training group, he wouldn't have spent more than 2 days on a phone before I'd have gotten him fired. Compared to the absolute darling you spoke to yesterday (or, well, you posted it yesterday at least), this guy is absolutely horrible.
@@Remigrator I don't think the guy is incompetent, he did provide some answers, but his delivery is what I would have him fired for. He comes off as insulting at first by demanding his set up questions be answered. What he should have done is simply let Louis explain, take notes and then move to his required questions after telling him they'll look into it.
There were many other things I could point out. Honestly this call could be used as an example of how NOT to talk to a customer. I perfectly get why Louis threw his keyboard at the end...
@@Remigrator Or, the most likely explanation, they issued these warrants for a specific business and messed up and hit 600 ids that happened to partially match.
@@Darkdaej This isn't a customer service role for a business, this is a bureaucrat. You weren't training high level bureaucrats, you were training customer service reps. Fundamentally different functions. He's not there to please Louis or get him to buy anything, he's there to provide answers as efficiently as possible so he can answer as many people's concerns as possible per day. He did a fantastic job at that, while it's frustrating to be interrupted every time Louis was interrupted it was with pertinent information that prevented an unnecessary tangent.
What it comes down to is "someone's covering our asses over the error, you're no longer being asked to pay anytthing, so stop asking questions because our cleaners are at work".
Louis, I'm sorry man. When my family lived in Miami when we were younger they continually had to battle tax issues like this to the point my father closed his own business due to how many times they were claiming leans on him that didn't exist. If it wasn't for the fact he was great childhood friends with a lawyer who dealt with tax issues we would still be owing around $400k in state taxes due to their gross incompetence. I hope no one else has to deal with anything of the sort as our family would never have been able to fight this and we'd be homeless 10x over.
it would be incompetence if they wanted you to pay less taxes than 'owed'. If they want you to pay more (and often they do get paid more) then they're getting compliments from bosses.
I like how this last guy acts like they did all the work and got this cleared up for you and you should thank them for doing this clean up rather than take responsibility for the screwup. And I think we learned through this that you don't have to be physically served with a warrant, it just goes on public records by whatever agency files against you and you have to find it by accident by searching nationwide databases every day or be told by someone you have a warrant against you.
this series should be posted on all online communities related to finances and business in New York. with luck, it could make a lot of people fund a war chest to take this to the highest courts or something. this may be even worth the attention of James O'Keefe and his new organization.
I think that they make it hard on purpose, so anyone concern enough to call them wouldn't have enough patience to go through with everything you decide to go through.
Weaponized incompetence. No one wants to actually make a functioning system because it takes money to rewrite the software the various agencies use to share information and to hire enough qualified staff to actually help resolve issues, and making the system functional would probably cause revenue to drop as they no longer have people paying bogus charges just so they can stop having to deal with the system. And so you get agencies which are chronically understaffed, the staff who are there are barely trained, and even if they wanted to do more they are crippled with software and red tape that prevents them from actually doing their jobs properly.
@@fakjbf3129 NYC is a special case, while plenty of other governments have nepotism problems it seems NYC is entirely staffed through nepotism. The corruption in that city is so much worse than any other place in the US, it's a travesty.
I'm betting one of the higher ups was watching The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, saw the scene about finding permit a38 and probably got a hard-on from just thinking about how much more money he'd be able to milk out of people if he recreated it
He wasn't calm and collected at all. His anger just manifests as nervous gestures and a lot of talking. Not to mention getting openly hostile with the guy at the end and winging his keyboard into the ground.
did you notice he was AIR fighting a (kung-fu) wing-chun fighting dummy with his hands. if i saw someone doing that i would want to vacate the STATE!, he was boiling... I REALLY HOPE HES OK, and didnt do too much damage to anything at home..... next video will be down the gym smashing something, i suspect he will use an UBER (or steve) to get there.
this is... actually massively criminal. you easily have material for a case. whatever you do, keep the records of these phone calls in multiple places off the cloud/YT. it would be easy for interested parties to have them removed from YT via DCMA request.
Qualified immunity means the government can not be taken to court for this kind of thing. Qualified immunity is some random nonsense the supreme court just came up with one day, not an actual law passed by congress.
@@alexdrockhound9497 Sadly the only fix for this qualified immunity nonsense is for people to observe their constitutional duty (Declaration of Independence, paragraph 2) and use their self-evident, non-alienable rights as stated in the 1st paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and, by extension, the 2nd Amendment, to replace the government that has ceased to serve We the People. The very Declaration of Independence that allows the USA to even exist says in its FIRST TWO paragraphs that the government is NOT to have immunity from the people it is sworn to serve.
using DMCA would be hilarious. the DMCA is a sharp double edged sword. Making a DMCA takedown request means filling a legal action with legal assertions. *You can challenge those assertions.*
@@alexdrockhound9497 qualified immunity only stands if the government has plausible deniability. if they "didnt know" or they "wern't indenting to cause harn", then they're immune. however, the case can be made that due to the governments unwillingness to fix its IT infrastructure, their staffers constant dismissal of egregious errors, and of issuing warrants without proper legal serving, they have completely gone outside the protections offered by qualified immunity because their staff made pointed and clear decisions to dismiss these errors. infact, there might even be a case for reporting the NYC tax department to the IRS for tax fraud
They wouldn't DMCA it, they'd tell an employee to privacy claim it because that's not linked to anything legal. You see that tact used a lot against government accountability activists.
When he started spouting off about "if you tell me you have a different mailing address in the winter..." I would've interrupted and said right, I never gave you an address in Maine, YOUR department put that on there, and I want an explanation.
I remember a few years ago commenting to you on one of your live streams to get the hell out of NY already... I'm so happy you're doing this... Every person who doesn't do business there because of these videos is a win. The place is rotten from top to bottom and has been for quite a while...
The lady at 17:29 is one of the most professional courteous and honest cs agent I've ever heard. Kudos to her , not for resolving your problem, but being a pillar of excellence in CS phone etiquette.
Sometime around 2001/2002 I finished a call with the bank that really pissed me off, and after hanging up, I twisted that candy-bar POS clean in half. That keyboard toss was RIGHTEOUS.
Is this one of those situations where if an agent apologises for anything, it may expose the agency to legal action? 'Cause this guy has a scull on his cap for sure.
I know we all knew New York had it’s problems but this is literally a Mafia government. I always wanted to visit people I knew and visit the city but god this is horrible
@Sacredheals TV it's perfectly safe to visit (as long as you stay out of Times Square and never, ever respond to a random person on the street trying to sell you something), just don't set down roots.
Damn Louis... I really hope you can sue the crap out of them at this point. Non of this is even slightly acceptable. Also I am amazed at how much self control you had ! You did well
You know what really gets me? You can hear it in his voice that this not only ruined his chances for expansion of his business. But also his relationship with Erica. You can almost see the rage in his eyes about this. Yea... NY did him DIRTY.
@@MickeyMishra (need to fix me no being able to be tagged ... I changed it when the spam wave was going on and it never changed back xD) I find that man on the phone so freaking irritating! He is so passiv aggressiv and condescending. Makes me want to puke ! The thing is, all of this reminds me of a situation I had in Germany with the government. I needed social benefits because I was unable to hold a job. 3... 3 times I had to file the same form to finally get it through. 6 months of uncertainty if I can even keep living here etc. Then they switched me from unemployment money to money for people with disabilitys etc. That agency kept money to them selfs because they did a miss calculation. Again, this caused me to be without any money for months ! And I kid you not I could not call them. Wether directly, nor the the city hall know what to do and so on. I resolved it by getting a ride there and reading a post it at the front door. Saying call this number because you can't come inside do to covid restrictions. Well that number worker but they kept sending me in circles and ignored my plead about not being able to pay rent. Even though I had evidence they signed my mail I sent them ! I get his reaction 100% ! Although mine didn't take so long to resolve ...
Louis, if it doesn't end up driving you crazy or bankrupting you you should totally keep persuing this. If nothing else it's an awesome case study for how compartmentalization and low level incompetence can result in a moderately functional taxation department on the surface that has just enough wiggle room to allow for some shady dealings to exist within the background static. You're on to something, but be wise about how much you dig. Great content by the way!
He shouldn't. He's not going to root out the problem no matter what. Let them collapse and then deal with it while everyone is pointing fingers instead of backing eachother up.
@@Mavendow Ha ha ha, this is the New York State department of tax and finance, they will never, ever collapse. They are the epitome of "too big to fail" and they will survive the heat death of the universe.
@@R14-m4z Weird take, bro. I'm just saying he should not waste his life on people who've done enough of that already. What's he gonna do? Take down the big bad billionaires with his tiny small business? Please. I live in reality, not some justice-seeking fantasy world.
At 30:00, I woulda questioned whether I accidentally uncovered some weird, underground money laundering scheme carried out through warrants and PO boxes
(insane laughter) I can't believe I'm actually invested in your quest to get this resolved, tax errors, holy crap, this is insane what you can make entertaining Louis!
It’s not an error, it’s a scam. There’s a worker having these small amounts sent to a PO Box they go near frequently enough to pick up. It’s small enough that no one will think twice about paying to just get rid of. They collect the fees that has a circular paper trail that can be written out of existence.
Wow! Just Wow! Kudos to Louis for remaining calm. It looked like several times he wanted to just explode, but patience prevailed! EDIT: Just saw the end! Confirmed, Louis did explode!
Lou, your soft skills are impressive to say the least. I spent 10 years in customer service working in call centers for large companies. i now work in IT and will be showing these videos to my techs as part of their soft skills training. you manage to hit every major point in the skill set in these calls. bravo sir. bravo.
@@MickeyMishratrue nyc is massive so you'll likely run into every problem conceivable frequently due simply to the sheer number of inquiries , other places are just as corrupt if not more but those issues just haven't bubbled to the surface or they are better at masking it.
I wonder if the other 600 warrants issued at the same time suddenly disappeared over the past few weeks since you've been making this fiasco public. Or at least the addresses on file for those warrants perhaps suddenly expunged from the database. This really feels like someone realized their scam has been discovered and the jig is up so now they're covering their tracks.
If this was just a record in a database, then yea. Its very likely someone with an access would delete all data. I can even bet they dont even do data backups, so noone would know xD
This guy mentioned a system that issues warrants automatically. Someone else mentioned that you had a temporary business tax ID number while waiting on your main one, and the warrant was issued against that temporary one. There was also a typo in the temporary business name, but not in the new one. Finally 600 other businesses getting hit with the same tax due at the same time. My guess is that when attempting to update your business information automatically, the system hit an error because the old name and the new name did not match. Thus the old one was not deleted and the new one was created, which your information was mostly migrated to. The Temp ID eventually hits the conditions to automatically be served a warrant, but with no mailing address on file (due to the attempted automatic migration/deletion), it had an error and somehow (through some mechanic) resulted in that being sent to the Maine P.O. Box. This likely happened to the other 600 businesses as well, due to it being the same time/amount. All of your businesses hit the required amount to be served at once. The Maine address was likely removed by the woman who updated your file to the Texas one. She likely interacted with your file in an abnormal way to update it, and their system isn't modern/resilient enough to keep proper records of that. I honestly doubt she was trying to hide any evidence or anything. There is probably some old C or Basic code running this whole thing, and it likely has not-so-good error checking. In summary, they should Rewrite it in Rust.
Hah. This. I wouldn't discount the chance of foul play because of the 'right to repair' stuff and all. And there is a whole lot of incompetence and simply not caring for sure. But you don't even need to scratch the surface to realize how stagnated they are when it comes to tech. The whole system, in every sense, is barely crawling along. Somehow. Imagine a 100 billion $ / year company having a website or support line as broken as that. Burning money like that. Not taking accountability like that... Taking it to court and spending tons of money and years of time on it is probably 'the correct way' to go about it. It's certainly one way. I would enjoy seeing Louis take charge an start a gofundme to fund a court case, speak about it in news and whatnot. But he's right - the real power is in people either way. I believe that when it comes to problems with technology or most kinds of 'systems' in general - the modern solution is usually... technology. We can't rewrite their systems or buy them a better support infra even if we wanted to. But.. I think there is room for digital activism here for sure. Personally - I don't really care if your hat is white or black, either would work. Maybe it's the right place and time to show how easy it is to bring down a system completely when it is already barely crawling as its norm? Just to point out the obvious problem.. On the other hand - last week there has been 950 warrants issued against companies in NYC. That's 135 warrants per day. I couldn't look into it more, because apparently a modern website needs 11 hours of maintenance every week... They are probably distributing the effort of making the captcha from 2002 work every time, not only some of the time... Personally I'd like to think that 135 warrants is something that NYC Tax & Finance should be able to handle better. They do have 198 employees. Anyway - the Good Tech Samaritan "solution" could be to write a crawler to get the ~150 warrants from public record every day and try to fetch a proper e-mail for involved company, then simply write them like "Hey - it's not really my issue, but in case NYC is too incompetent to let you know about this - you might want to know that they just issued a tax warrant on your company - here's the warrant ID: --- . KTHXBAI". Once you write it, you could probably run it off of a Pi. Dadaaaa! You automated something NYC tax and finance couldn't do with 198 workers. Possible savior for victims of NYC state incompetence and a big FU finger pointed at their issues.
