Having spent more time than most in dealing with Senator’s staff, here’s how it works. If you call them, you’ll have generally three choices, press one to comment on an issue, press two comments on specific legislation or press three for to receive a call back. I have an issue with the IRS and had already emailed Senator Rubio’s office. I was emailed a form allowing his staff to discuss the problem. I sent in a package and got a call from an intern, who told me he had the package, and it was all properly executed. You could tell he had zero phone experience, and he promptly lost my package. I called them a week later and pressed three and another intern returned my call. Eventually, they got and processed the forms. I had probably six callbacks from six calls in ten weeks, all with an intern. Finally, when Rubio’s office shut down, I got to speak with an actual staffer who was leaving the job that week. She had finally gotten a response from the TSA, an agency that interfaces between the IRS and the proletariat.
This started on November first and today I finally got a call from my ombudsman. There’s a three dB loss of information with each interaction and I spent the afternoon resending information I’ve already sent several times. I got her to admit the IRS simply double charged the taxes and added fines and penalties on top of that. She agreed the IRS should refund our first payment, but not, apparently, the second which included fines for not making the first payment, which they still have. She has to deal with the IRS as they don’t deal with the public.
As for blanket emailing the Senators, I’m pretty sure their spam filter will get it as they all use the same .gov server. I’ve had the chance to question someone in another senator’s office and they’re pretty good at deleting spam before it gets to anyone. It’s one-on-one or nothing.
Interesting. Thanks for all that.
I have not tried to contact my Senator Ted Budd, North Carolina since He moved from the House up to Senate.
I did contact him when he was in the House and I called one morning. It was like 06:45 Local Time to and he actually answered the phone himself at the local office. He did immediately remember seeing my situation information in the to do box and had the answer for me that I was trying to find out, but I hadn’t gotten a call back from a Staffer yet.