I thought this was funny.
Weird comments in the thread about how he/she should have known better.
Author is not making a complaint to demand internet outrage. There is no inflammatory justice warrior content here. Sheesh!<p>Author admits they screwed up, decided to share the screwup, and who hasnt been trough that exact dunder blunder?<p>Fun short read 8/10.
<i>> They require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard. This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript.</i><p>I don't think this is generally worth it as a security measure, but the goal is not to protect against automation. Instead, custom on-screen keyboards are attempts to thwart keyloggers.
I have learned the hard way that when dealing with government software (at least in the US), you must assume the least favorable/most unfavorable interpretation of any information given.<p>When I saw the email informing the author of the over-purchase, I knew there was no way out. Purchasing the difference, as the author did, would only cause more trouble. The questions now are how much will be refunded, whether any purchases will go through, and whether there will be a fine or legal action. Refer to the rule above for my guesses.<p>I think many people do not appreciate how devastating this is to public trust.
I'm missing the logic of the second 10k. He had already exceeded the limit. Why did he think that doing it again would change the outcome?<p>It looks to me like he was going to get the extra $25 returned to him and have 10k in bonds. It's definitely vague though.
The venn diagram of internet users that read about super specific financial products, decide to buy them, while not even understanding the need to keep an emergency fund such that a move like this leaves them with under $200 in their account seems to be growing.<p>It seems to be a weird mix of wall street cosplay and financial ineptitude.
I've been in the US for 4 years and it seems like the government is just like a computer that you cannot talk to or get issues fixed somehow. It's like, if something goes wrong you're fucked. If USPS loses your documents or even your car's title, or your immigration approval notice, you're fucked, you might need to wait 2 months, or 6, or 8, and nobody cares, nobody will help you. There's no one that can help you.<p>At least that's how I feel here.
I wonder: when they say "A refund of the excess purchase will be made...", does that mean they'll refund the entire $10,000 transaction, or will they keep $9,975 of it (so that you <i>do</i> have a $10K i-bond investment) and only refund the excess $25?
If you haven’t done something stupid like this a few times in your life, you ain’t living.<p>This is a perfect HN post because it combines terrible technology and “let’s see how it breaks.” Thanks OP, a delightful Sunday read.
I did something <i>analogous</i>?/similar-ish recently.<p>I tried to pay my parents' credit card balance (let's say it was $1000).<p>I went through the process and received an automated email saying, "Thank you for paying $1000 on the credit card."<p>Got a call from my father a few hours later telling me he spent another $300 and could I please pay the extra $300...?<p>So, I signed in again and paid another $300.<p>Only thing is, unbeknownst to me, the $300 payment <i>canceled</i> the $1000 payment -- because they both were scheduled for the same day.<p>I only found out when I signed in a few weeks later and saw a $40 interest charge for not paying the full balance on the credit card.<p><grumble>...<p>Definitely my fault for not paying closer attention, but still annoying.
You took one for the team. If the world ran on good software, you'd not cautiously deposit only $25 first and you'd not be tempted to stress-test the system with the $10k deposit. If the world ran on good software, the second $9.975k deposit wouldn't have bounced. Don't worry, I'll get back at them in my work by making the users suffer until they understand what good software is!
I was (pleasantly) surprised to see that the analogous website for Mexico, where you buy government-issued bonds called Cetes, is significantly less confusing to use. That is not at all what I expect when comparing government websites between my native Mexico and the US! (Paying taxes is another example of something with much, much better UI/UX in Mexico, but there probably are not many other examples.)<p>Also, the refunds for Cetes when you go over the limit take a few days, not 8 to 10 weeks.
This'll be a good story to tell at the bar once all the money comes back. I'm still baffled by how someone thought "let's see what happens if I send $20k here when the system says it shouldn't be possible".<p>Strip a few zeroes from there and I guess it's worth the funny anecdote, but these are serious amounts of money that the author just sent into the black hole of bureaucracy for shits and giggles.
"A refund of the <i>excess</i> purchase will be made"<p>Sounds like he will have made his intended 10k investment, there's no indication the system doesn't work as intended (even though it could work a lot better, obviously - the app could check for the investment limit right away, and an 8-week window for refunds, in a system that offers 2-month investments, is borderline scammy).
“A refund of the excess purchase” seems like $25 from the second purchase and then $9975, the entire third purchase… but maybe it is all but $25 like the author assumed.
> This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript<p>I don't think this is a defense against bots. Virtual keyboards were created primarily as a defense against keyloggers, IMHO.
Roughly the same thing happened to me on a much much bigger scale. I was making an estimated income tax prepayment (as required by law) on the ridiculous IRS direct pay site. There was no way to undo my error that I could find on the IRS websites. I foolishly thought that when the IRS web page said something like “system problem try again later” meant that I should try again later.<p>I feel like the agencies should just let Visa or Mastercard handle billing and collection.
I had it in my mind during the Great Recession that quantitative easing was going to create a ton of inflation in the 2010s, so I started putting money in I-Bonds each year. That inflation never came, and I did pull some funds out of the I-Bonds for real estate transactions along the way (no regrets) but I've still been buying them every year as a hedge. What's great today is that the I-Bonds really have softened the blow of inflation, since after having them sit there with a low interest rate for a decade, I'm able to say "AHA! Finally! The I-Bonds were worth it!" It's a brief moment of cheer in each depressing news cycle. That enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that I'm not actually <i>making</i> money with them, of course.<p>But good lord is that TreasuryDirect site the worst site on the Internet. Every single time - and I mean every single time - I instinctively click the back button to go back to a prior screen only to be presented with an error message and thrown out of my session, requiring another visit to the god-awful virtual keyboard and navigation through menu after menu of curiously similar, poorly-worded options. They can do better.
> They're zero-risk bonds with an interest rate that always matches or exceeds inflation<p>The caveat is that you must agree with how your govt. calculates inflation. Also, your personal expenses might not be well represented by official inflation. Finally, like any bond, if you sell them before they mature you might get smaller (or higher) returns.<p>Not saying this is a bad investment though, I just rarely see those risks discussed!
> This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript (and in fact it's easier to do it that way if you know how).<p>Surely this is to prevent keyloggers, no slowing down bots. With that said it is questionable if it is worth it. People would probably pick less secure password as a result.
This reminds me of when I gave my new work-subsidized printer my CC during the pandemic.<p>It tried ordering new ink based on supply levels and apparently became upset with the supply chain delays so it kept trying to order as the ink remained low. (Of course, I didn’t recognize this for a while…)<p>Silly me, I had assumed someone would code a simple ‘check-if’ flag in the ‘order ink’ algorithm…
Er, what? Surely he's got the wrong end of the stick and they'll be refunding the excess $25 of his second purchase, (and now the entire $9975 of his superfluous third).
Is this window the author speaks about still open?<p>I don't know anything about money/finance. Can someone ELI5 to me if I can still get the free money from this, this year?
> it dawned on me that not only did I just loan $19,975 to the government for 2 months with zero interest, but I’d locked myself out of the golden window for buying I-bonds.<p>This guy has less than 20 grand to his name and he's investing in I-Bonds? That's the real tragedy.
Once I was on an automated monorail at a zoo and my wife and I were the only people on the train at that moment. I wondered, what would happen if I forced the doors open? The answer is that the train stopped immediately and eventually someone came on the intercom, asked us not to bump the door, and then the train restarted.<p>Another time, I was using a public restroom and it contained a very large red button with a very large sign that read "ATTENTION DO NOT PUSH RED BUTTON UNLESS IT IS AN EMERGENCY"[1]. I did not push the button and my curiosity about remains unsatisfied.<p>Point is, just because the Federal government ordains that the limit on series I bonds is $10K purchased electronically plus $5K purchased with tax refund per tax ID[2] per calendar year, you shouldn't expect the web site itself to enforce this limit. There's all sorts of ways you can accidentally or intentionally exceed limits, sometimes systems will catch them, but sometimes not.<p>In prior years, you could even apparently get away with exceeding the limit with no more than a stern warning not to do it again[3].<p>I'm fairly confident OP misinterpreted the emails they got from Treasury Direct, and that the Treasury will refund the excess amount of the purchase, not full transaction amount. At this point, they own $10K in Series I bonds and will receive a refund for the excess $10K. I'm curious if they'll get the refund as a single transaction for $10K, or as two transactions of $25 and $9975.<p>[1]: <a href="https://imgur.com/jAKRPQt" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/jAKRPQt</a><p>[2]: You can use "Entity Accounts" to purchase additional bonds. <a href="https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/help/tdhelp/help_ug_292-entityaccountslearnmore.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/help/tdhelp/help_ug_292...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/na13f/exceeding_the_i_bond_limit_on_treasurydirect/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/na13f/exce...</a>
Not sure how it works in the US, but in my country the inflation-indexed bonds are still subject to the capital gains tax, so they offer a true hedge only up to a certain level.<p>Obviously still better than regular bonds in this regard.
Seeing the US treasury website's incredibly poor UX for buying I-bonds convinced me that, as bad as TurboTax is for doing "free" tax returns (see <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...</a>), maybe we would not in fact be better off if the IRS make its own website for doing tax returns.
This reminds me of a time I played with entering data into a terrible system.<p>A GE MRI scanner had options in the software that could be on, or off. Rather than a check box you typed ‘1’ or ‘0’. This is relatively recently.<p>I tried for a while to find a field that would accept other values, and eventually found one. When the sequences ran it crashed the scanner and the patient had to be rebooked as the reboot takes a long time.<p>I don’t test on patients anymore.
The obsession with the high variable rate on ibonds right now strikes me as weird.<p>With a fixed rate of 0% at the moment, the ibond is an "investment" which is guaranteed to lose real value because the 'gains' from the ibond are taxed so if the fixed rate is zero it will lose real value. It will also lose value due to systematic understatement of inflation e.g. due to the substitution correction-- but even if you believe that its inflation metric is fair the taxation makes it lose value.<p>Now-- if your investment plans direct you to hold something cash-like which ibonds withdraw delays are still good enough to satisfy, then okay sure, it does pay more than <i>cash</i>. But that's the right comparison. Ibonds are not, for example, a good alternative to buying a market index with a historical return of 10% <i>after inflation</i>.
Best part is, I went in to login this morning to check my account and it's down for "system maintenance". At least the government is consistent with running a service that feels like it's out of 1998.<p>I never want to see what their backend database looks like -- probably ROT0ing the passwords.
Posts and threads like this make me so happy to be using the payment stack that is in the UK. We have the Faster Payments scheme which now allows moving £1million pretty much instantly (no card fees).<p>And now we have open banking which makes creating bank transfers like this trivial for the end user [disclaimer, I work for a leading open banking API company in the UK] and the right API can be just as easy as stripe to use<p>I guess it's in part helped that we were stuck with only a few old major banks until the last decade when the technology was ready for the new challenger banks to actually offer new interesting ideas. I think the US is stuck with thousands of smallish banks that somehow need to send cash between themselves.
“if you buy before May this year, you get a guaranteed ~8.5% return over the next 12 months”<p>I don’t think this is correct. They’re going to re-calculate the interest rate 6 months from May and it could be less than ~8.5%. So you’re really just guaranteed ~4.25% for half the year.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only internet user who wonders "will this fail?" to the point that they try the problematic action before their original, intended action. It's this kind of thinking that got me into software QA a decade ago.
I thought the OP was being hyperbolic with the description of how comically bad this website is, until today when I tried it. Among other absurdities and mistakes that not even the most junior dev would make:<p>* Passwords require a mix of upper/lower and special characters, however when entering your password on the ALL UPPERCASE VIRTUAL KEYBOARD, you're informed that they're not case-sensitive.<p>* Any use of the back button gets you to an error page, from which there is no way to get back to your account. You're now logged out.<p>It's as if whoever built the site never even tested it.
> I-bonds are either free money or the only true money storage...But the government only lets each person buy $10,000 of I-bonds a year.<p>That's too little to be true money storage. It's not enough to buy any new car.
My understanding is that he bought $25, then another $9975 when he tried the $10k purchase, then $0 when he tried the $9975 purchase. So he should receive $10k in bonds and $25 + $9975 in refunds.
Actionable item for US taxpayers:<p>> ... deposited to your TreasuryDirect account by the IRS as a result of an IRS tax refund ...<p>The how-to:<p><a href="https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/articles/res_invest_articles_tax_refund_1208.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/articles/res_i...</a><p>Anyone know when this became possible? I've been buying I-bonds for years and it's news to me. Paper bonds have been a hassle, all-online is a huge improvement.
Just curious about the "golden window for buying I-bonds" he mentions:<p>what is the benefit of buying ibonds on April 30, 2022 at 7.12% gain versus buying on May 1, 2022 at 9.6% gain?
Ok you purchase $25 then you purchase $10,000 instead of $9975. Are we sure based on the message that they in that scenario that they are refunding the entire purchase of $10,000 or just the excess $25?<p>If that was so it would make perfect sense that the third transaction to purchase $9975 would fail because you already purchased your limit in the second transaction. In that case user would expect 2 refunds 25 and 9975 NOT 10,000 and 9975.
When I started reading and got to the portion where the author is saying that money to compensate for inflation is "free money", I immediately thought: "this person does not understand the world, should not do financial investments without professional assistance". Then the rest of the story confirmed it. There is some educational value in posting this here, but still the bar is quite low.
> Recently I learned that the US government offers a little gift called I-bonds, and that this is the month to buy them.<p>Basically an ordinary HNer saw that article posted here about I-bonds, and like a typical HNer, probably thinks they're a lot smarter than they actually are, so they went and tried to buy a financial product they didn't fully understand, made a mess of it, and now blames the UI.
It could be that the email was ambiguous (because the refund amount was not stated in the email) and he'll get back only $10,000 total (only $25 from the first deposit), in which case he's actually purchased $10,000 worth of bonds, but he'd only find this out in 8-10 weeks.<p>Shoddy software like this undermines general trust in the government.
> so the math works out such that if you buy before May this year, you get a guaranteed ~8.5% return over the next 12 months, but if you miss this month you might get screwed.<p>Can anybody elaborate on this? If I buy on Monday what’s the rate?
I-Bonds have rules. For example, you have to hold the bond for five years or you must pay back three months interest. I expect in about 12 months there will be a horde of people upset when they find that out.
Why doesn't the USDS get involved in this?<p>The Treasury is supposed to be a huge backbone of the world's economy and it doesn't look good imo to have software designed this badly for it.
Am I crazy or will the author get a refund of the “excess purchase”, e.g. $25 refunded to their bank account (until they dumped in an extra $9975 anyway)
This is the case with many retailers too, I bought a faulty appliance and returned it. However I didn’t receive merchant credit til almost 8 days later.
> Obviously I was only allowed to buy another $9,975. But if I tried to buy $10,000, what would happen? It must be a common type of error. Would they let $9,975 go through and return $25? Would they reject the whole transaction? Would the rejection happen immediately, in an hour, in a day? It was a morbid curiosity. I already knew I was using lackluster software, yet I wanted to see just how inept it could be. No real damage could be done, I figured.<p>Does not sound like an accident, but a clickbait instead.
Are bonds issued by a dysfunctional government that is severely in debt in the middle of a couple of years of consistently tumultuous world events really “risk free” anymore though?<p>These bonds only match inflation as defined by the government via CPI. But there is a strong argument that real world inflation is significantly higher than CPI.
Great story :)<p>I'm guessing it will have a happy ending because there's a thinking human on the other side. This is government, not a private megacorp.
This is why for example when you take your car to the DMV to get a new drivers license, there is always a small chance you will leave without a license, or a car for that matter.
This guy sent $10025 and is getting a $25 refund in 8 weeks (which is a ridiculous time to process a refund) and then for some reason decided to lock up another $10k and tries to pass this off as accidential?
My goodness. People applying wallstreetbets thinking and Robinhood exploits to US treasuries, the safest financial instruments in the land, goes to show there’s just too much money sloshing around in the system.
That’s why you buy through a bank.<p>Edit: I am wrong. You can only buy it two ways which is ridiculous in my view.<p>More to the point of the website that belongs in a museum, why can’t they update this consumer facing portal? What happened to all the people from “digitization” govt organizations? Such as 18F and usds. Oh. You mean all they do is replace the front end? Got it.
Judging by screenshots in the article, I don't think that UI is as bad as described. Actually, it is better than UI of private commercial financial institutions. It uses black letters on a white background, links are properly underlined, no annoying notifications from CEO, no full screen popups, no timers making you hurry, no attempts to upsell something unnecessary, no asking to subscribe for a newsletter, no deceiving descriptions that mention only good sides and conceal the risks.<p>Regarding virtual keyboard, of course it would be better to use physical keys, but for reasons I don't understand they don't have a wide adoption that they deserve.
It honestly sounds like you have zero idea how any of this works, saw some ad about 8% and without reading anything else decided to go all in. And then you decided you wanted to try and break the software while playing around $20k to the US treasury. And now you’re shocked you have to wait 2 months for a refund that’s technically your fault.
OP should count themselves very lucky they're (eventually) getting an actual cash refund and not some sort of IOU only redeemable against future income tax due.<p>When you deal with an entity that has the monopoly on legitimate violence, your bargaining power is - unsurprisingly - borderline nonexistent.
Zero risk loan and guaranteed interest rate doesn't mean no risk the government won't default on repayments. If that happens, it is likely to get back the full capital + interest, but at that point in a currency worth initial capital - interest.
Lending to a government is only safe when trust of that government is high. At the moment we are at a all time low since the 30s with regards to the US government treasury.
> They're zero-risk bonds...<p>To qualify this, there is zero risk that the technical letter of the agreement won't be honoured.<p>Lending money to the US government is very <i>high</i> risk right now. Simple person metrics like debt to GDP indicate they're currently fighting a bigger war than WWII, and the trend-line says they are losing. If you lend the US government enough money to buy a sandwich there is a real risk that at the end of the agreement they'll return an amount of money that won't get you a sandwich.<p>It doesn't matter that they say "inflation protected" on the tin. Exactly what happens there is uncertain, it is quite likely that there will be games played with inflation figures. Or a simple haircut of how much money they owe ("we did owe you $100, now we owe you $75. Law says so.").