In my last unemployment related post I hinted at at least one more “Indiana Unemployment Insurance Benefit” post and here it is…

In the past few months the folks who run the Indiana Department of Workforce Development (IDWD) decided to “help” the unemployed by sending them “Indiana Unemployment Insurance Benefit Debit Cards” which they would then in turn deposit your weekly benefits “checks” to. The main reasoning gave for the change was something about it speeding up the process of receiving your benefits, being more convenient and saving you money on check cashing fees. So, lets take a look at this thinking…

Previously they sent a paper check that I’d take to my local bank and deposit into my account. Simple enough, right?

Now my process is:

1. figure out when they have made a deposit into my account
2. drive to a bank different than my own (apparently my bank isn’t on their list OR they would charge me some sort of additional fees)
   AND
   1. request a balance total via ATM (for some reason a teller can’t OR won’t tell you what the balance is), which charges me $0.50 per inquiry
   2. go to a teller and request the remaining balance in cash
3. drive to my bank and deposit the cash

So that is more convenient how? The only way to make the process more convenient would be a direct deposit into my bank account, which of course they do not offer.

As I’ve stewed over this for a while now, the overall logic behind the change just doesn’t make sense and I seriously wonder if there’s some other reason behind this (I won’t even begin to speculate except to say that it is the government). Anyway, here’s the rundown of my additional thoughts:

• What check cashing fees are people avoiding? If you’re making an unemployment claim, there’s a good chance that you’re not headed to the legalized loan shark to cash your check AND that you have your own bank account which doesn’t charge you to deposit checks into your account. Unemployment is not Welfare, but the mention of check fees makes me wonder if someone seems to think that it is. A quick look at the requirements for collecting unemployment insurance benefits would make that fact evident to anyone. These are people who have lost their jobs by no fault of their own…they didn’t quit and they didn’t wake up one morning and say, “You know, I don’t think that I want to work anymore and I’d like a paid ‘vacation’.”
• Direct deposit…what it the world is so hard about that?
• The debit card can be used to buy groceries, gas and what not and you can get cash back, but…
  • you can only spend what is on the card, which is good, but not easy to manage if you don’t know the balance
  • my important bills require payment via check or e-check, not by credit/debit cards
• There is a website which is supposed to tell you about your account for free, but when I have tried to setup the online access it keeps telling me that it “Cannot find any client that matches the given biographical information.” So I called their toll free number to try to get this sorted out and get an automated system and then sat on hold when I tried to get a real person and finally hung up because my time is worth more than the $0.50 I’ll get charged at the ATM. Plus I only have a few weeks left, so I’m not even going to bother.
• The benefits checks are half of your previous salary (at the very best from what I can tell), so most people are not going to be sitting around all day on their couch watching Oprah and eating Bon Bons. The majority of people are going to be busting their tails to find some way to land a decent job or to create their own.
• Unemployment is by no means a paid vacation, at least not in my case. I’m busier now than I ever was when I had a “day job”…now I am never “off the clock”.

So there’s my unemployment rant. Hopefully that will be the last you hear about it.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 11:50 am and is filed under Unemployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.