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Vent: My "30 minute" filing project ate up 4 hours today
I thought I could knock out my quarterly business license renewal before my 10am call. Figured it would take like 30 minutes tops because I had all the numbers ready. Three hours later I was still on hold with the city of Portland trying to figure out why their online portal kept rejecting my payment. Turns out they changed their EIN verification system last month and didn't tell anyone. Had to dig out my original formation documents from 2019 to find the right confirmation code. Four hours total for something that should have been a simple copy-paste job. Has anyone else run into city systems that just randomly update without warning?
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ben_fisher3mo ago
Wait, they seriously didn't send a single email about that?
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craig.parker3mo ago
Ask if you ever got any kind of notice from the city about this change ahead of time. I've dealt with Portland's systems before and they seem to think "we updated the process" counts as enough warning, even when it breaks everything. I had a similar thing happen with business license renewal in Multnomah County where they switched to a new vendor mid-cycle and didn't send out any email or letter about it. Did you have to redo any of your other information too or was it just the EIN code that caused the problem?
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sandra_moore303mo ago
Yeah I've been through this exact mess with a different city. They never send a heads up, just assume everyone checks their website daily. @craig.parker is right, it's always some vendor switch that screws everything up. Was it just the EIN field that broke or did you have to redo other stuff too?
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