I'm not at all upset now, but until my 3rd phone call to TIAA to get my annuity payments started I was in a greater and greater panic. For once, everything worked fine on the 3rd phone call and I got the required paperwork actually printed out while they were on the line (which is what you must do, it seems). Once they received the paperwork, they seem to have processed it the same day with my payments starting tomorrow. Couldn't be better.
But prior to the 3rd phone call I was in greater and greater panic. It seemed that little progress had been made in the first 2 phone calls. And it seemed it was not possible to generate the needed forms
on the website--though it seemed I had come tantalizingly close running the "visualizer" myself, which you can do, but going from the visualizer to the required forms was the part I could just never do. Forms prepared during the second phone call and nearly printed out simply disappeared, so there was no way I could continue to try after doing browser updates on my side. Static forms available for download were entirely inapplicable. There was no directly applicable phone menu choice, so it required about 5 minutes of phone menu navigating before I could get on hold to get a live agent, with nothing else being of the least use. And it seemed no progress at all had been made in handling my electronic submission of a birth certificate. It sat there in an online locker for months with no acknowledgement.
TIAA is, I feel, far better than most, perhaps the best. It is a non-profit mutually profit-sharing fund of funds for professors and scientists, so it's not as prone to all the usual rip-offs. But wrapped in the same web wallpaper of modern software failures and inconveniences, it can be damning too. Nicely, the TIAA application I ultimately filled out today did allow me to do an up to 10% pre-withdrawal, so I could have made up for 3 months or more of previously lost payments. (I decided not to take that, as my cash level is fine right now, I just want to get those monthly payments started asap so it stays that way, and so I can feel it's a done deal and I can get on with my life, instead of having more still unsolved crisis that mean the end of many luxuries.) Hopefully from this point on my annuity payments will soon begin, as I was promised today. But up until today, for 3 months, I had been seething with fear and frustration, all the more because I didn't have the time and mental energy to get this taken care of after the two previous stressful failed attempts.
THIS time I was better prepared. I had the latest version of the Chrome browser (updated yesterday) installed on my Mac (which itself was just updated last week). I opened the TIAA website in Chrome just before calling TIAA. I kept clicking on things on the website to keep it open, because if it closed, I might get stuck again on another of those "identify all the buses" quizzes that I can't ever seem to get correct in order to get it opened again. (Thanks Chrome. It would be easier just to type in my password.)
Normally I use Safari but it seemed possible that Safari was at the root of some previous problems. However, even previous attempts to use Chrome failed, so I'm not sure Safari was at fault. One nice thing about Safari is that it never bothers with the "identify all the buses" test.
Like all the previous TIAA representatives, this very thorough and patient representative promised to send paper copies to me also in the US mail. (I asked specifically about the US MAIL because when they say "we'll mail it to you" it's not always clear what that means.) I suppose it's moot now that I finally got the forms downloaded and printed out, but twice before after running into failures in the downloading and printing process, I was waiting and hoping for forms to arrive in the US mail and nothing but junkmail from TIAA ever arrived.
Prior to this latest phone call (actually it was the second call today as the first one got disconnected midstream*) things were looking pretty grim. The TIAA website itself is almost entirely nothing but marketing. I've wasted endless time trying to get something out of it myself, at first thinking it would be just a push-button selection, but later understanding that I'd need to download a document, prepare it, and send it in. I though it had even been said to me I could do that--all by myself. But nothing I tried worked. Earlier today was the final straw, I went straight to the Support menu (where I had not spent much time before), drilled down to the Transaction Forms, then into the Withdrawal forms, then in the two flavors of Annunity Withdrawal forms, fixed and variable. As it turned out, both linked to the same "defined benefit" form which was clearly not the one I needed. I had seen the likes of what I needed before, as prepared by the first representative I talked to in December, and it looked nothing like that. Meanwhile I couldn't simply use the one from December, because it allocated the wrong fund allocations and I changed my allocations right after that to simplify things. I tried endlessly to get it changed to the way I needed, and after many failures I ultimately deleted it, thinking it was blocking the creation of a new one I was trying to enable through the retirement income "visualizer." But no matter what I did, I couldn't create a new form either. I needed to have another representative prepare this form for me anew.
But hoping I could do this myself, and therefore control exactly how it was done, I wasted hours on the website. Almost everything you click on, no matter how promising it sounds, it basically an infomertial trying to convince you to put more money in your account. Though it never says this anywhere on the website, it seems that in order to annuitize your funds and get payments started, you apparently must call in, get an agent to pre-prepare the required forms, download them, and mail them in. Having had nothing but failures with the electronic document upload system, and wasted hours trying to get it to work with forms I was previously sent, I've decided to stick with US mailing documents in.
(*Midstream disconnection also happened when I had been on the line waiting to speak with a Social Security representative. That time I was told I would have to wait over 40 minutes (and btw, when it says that, try the next day instead) and after 25 minutes waiting on hold I simply got disconnected. I'm thinking there's an issue where my phone may disconnect if my check touches the screen in the wrong place, and I think that's what may have happened today on my first call to TIAA. So to prevent that from happening, I now handle these high stakes long phone calls in "speakerphone" mode. But then, in speakerphone mode, it seems like if the phone isn't constantly moving, it times out and hangs up. That also happened to me one time. So now what I do is I put the phone in speakerphone mode but also continue to hold it in my hand, just not up to my ear, as if I were talking to a rock.)
That's the thing about dealing with the web. It may seem like the web interface could be just as capable as a live person. But they never even come close. For one thing, there is no trivial way to pass documents back and forth, and sign them, as you might do at an actual insurance agent's office. The computer doesn't trust that you are the same person from one moment to the next (and indeed, some spoofer might not be). So everything is confounded and impossible, if it can be done at all, which usually isn't the case anyway.
In he prior 3 months I made 2 major attempts to begin annuity payments from my TIAA account. That includes 2 phone calls that were answered an in which I had a serious conversation lasting more than 20 minutes with a live TIAA assistant. (The second call lasted 48 minutes.) In every case, it appeared I'd only moved backwards from my goal, as each time more eForms appear to need to be filled out, while becoming more impossible to do so. In each phone call, it seemed like I was being promised that I would receive hardcopies IN THE US MAIL that I could fill out by hand and therefore avoid all the foibles that seem to make the online document completion impossible. Neither time did I receive anything in the US MAIL except more and more TIAA junk mail. Meanwhile, I received an eDocument after each phone call, but not what I was expecting.
Along with those phonecalls, before and after, I've spent a good portion of a half dozen or more days fiddling with the TIAA website and thinking about it.
And that is just part of 3 months worrying about it, worrying about how long it's going to take to get payments started, whether by the time I do the payment amounts will have dropped (which I'm always fearing it just did) or worse. For these months, I've been very busy with holiday parties and other things. Now that the holidays are over, I'm going to bear down on this particular problem "full time" until I get it solved (possibly taking time off for my taxes a couple months from now, if I can't get it solved by then).
It was far easier, btw, to begin payments with Social Security. There was an online application that took about 3 hours to fill out. It was a "40 minute" application but required some research and thinking, so I filled it out over the course of several days. It was an entirely online process (no need to scan or upload signed documents). Although I seem to recall the browser remaining open the whole time, I was also provided an identification number I could use to continue filling out the same application. It only got tricky later, when I tried to update my earnings record. It wasn't at all clear how to do that so I had to call Social Security on the phone. THAT wasn't easy because of the long waits. But ultimately, when I did get them online, they simply told me about the form I needed to fill out and I did that. I simply searched online for the form, downloaded it, printed it, filled it out in pen, and mailed it back. I could have been spared the need to call Social Security on the phone if they had simply made the required form more obvious, rather than simply saying I needed to contact Social Security to update my earnings record.
I suppose it's possible that in some instances I'm being particularly stupid somehow, and we can't blame TIAA for that. And there are failures that are going to occur anyway, because computer systems, especially computer systems with human interfaces, and especially web systems, are so highly unreliable across the variety of different browsers, operating systems, and versions of these, and other things. Which shows how totally off all techno utopianism is--we can't even get computers to do simple things well, and we imagine them mastering everything. But anyway, I can't blame TIAA for those kinds of failures either. But taken as a whole, it seems like the whole system is rigged against me, as if I'm trapped in John Steinbeck's novel, The Pearl, I've got this wonderful retirement fund, but I can't seem to get my pension started.
But, but, this is the essence of modern computing. It is rigged against us, by design. It is meant to be completely opaque on our side, so we can't see how we're being sliced, diced, ripped-off, and sold on the backside. We're not supposed to know what's being done or have any way of affecting it, except by a few very limited "user-friendly" controls that do little or nothing.
I had figured this process would be little more than a push-button when I started in December. I thought to myself, I'll do TIAA and then move on to Social Security. Instead, I whipped off my Social Security Application in one of the gaps in time when I was (falsely) waiting for some TIAA documents to arrive in the US Mail, only to have to try TIAA later with another phone call.
Despite all appearances, you cannot actually begin Annuity Payments through the website. It is a complex process I have yet to get to the bottom of, so I can't be sure, but it seems somehow you have to get the correct forms printed out, sign them or whatever, and mail them back to TIAA. Fine. But don't fall into the trap I did of trying to use electronic documents instead... You will not find it easy, and then once you have succeeded in getting your signed electronic documents posted back to the website and "submitted," it's not clear that anyone ever looks at them. I've never gotten any kind of acknowledgement regarding my electronic submissions. I may have made mistakes, but couldn't somebody or some robot tell me that???
That the process of starting Annuity Payments involves printing the correctly formatted form (with all the right info identifying the particular funds involved, the pensioner, and options selected) and US mailing it back is not actually described anywhere on the website. I only learned this from the my first phonecall, when the first feeble attempts were made to get the proper form filled out with the funds and options I wanted.
In my latest phone conversation, it appeared there were issues because on one of my contracts (or perhaps both, I'm confused at this point) listed my name by first initial only, whereas my actual name needs to be given. So, after my last call, they sent me a Name Change form to fill out. The problem is, this Name Change form REQUIRES that I provide a Court Date and other information about how my name changed. It doesn't seem to deal with the situation where my contract was started with my intial only instead of my real name because of some clerical (?) mistake by someone else. Catch-22.
At the end of my conversation in December, I received two "Identification of Age" eDocuments. I received two such documents because, over time, my institution migrated to a different set of TIAA funds (this is so complicated, and we can imagine why). I attempted to "complete" these documents by uploading images of signed copies and my birth certificate to the website. Those documents have been sitting in the "Information Center" and "Submitted" for review, but it's not clear anything happened as a result. When I talked to the agent in January, he said they would "look into it." They may be invalid because of the "initial" problem described above.
During the January conversation, the agent and I really tried hard to get the ultimate annuity authorization form printed out on my computer. That's the one I sign and send back to them. Problem was, each time he sent the document to me, the browser simply showed a blank screen after the document was sent to me. Starting with my default Safari browser, I tried Chrome and Firefox only getting similar results (possibly with some obscure messages). The agent decided this was possibly because of the problem with my Name being listed as an Initial, and hence said the impossible Name Change form to me.
Now that the phone call is over, it does not appear to be possible to even try to print out that annuity authorization form. I can't find it anymore on the website, which itself is endlessly complicated, virtually like an Adventure game, where you have to endlessly navigate to find anything useful.
The phone call is similar, they have very complicated phone menus, none of which appear to have anything to do with I want to do, many of which lead to dead ends giving you useless information.
*****
Yesterday I made one phone call to TIAA but after 5 minutes waiting decided to move on to something else. Every time I call I have to spend about 10 minutes fighting with the phone menu before I finally get myself on a line to talk to a real person. None of the options at any level of the phone menu seem to apply to what I want, but it's hard to get to a choice where you can choose "other" which ultimately, if you're lucky and choose a good time and have time to wait, you can talk to a live person, which at least seems to make something like progress, even if it's been mostly more and more uncompleted "documents" so far.
Online I found the familiar rut. One would think that what I want to do (start annunity payments from my two TIAA Traditional accounts) wouldn't be esoteric, but nothing seems to apply.
Anyway, at first considering this an "Action" I go open the Action menu. This has a few promising looking entries (but none that does anything useful).
The most promising sounding Action item is "Start Loan/Withdrawal." That brings me to a page showing me only the balance in my variable accounts, which could be withdrawn immediately. It doesn't say anything about my TIAA Traditional accounts, as if they didn't exist (the first time I got to this page 3 months ago, I screamed "what happened to all my money!"). It says if I want more information I can call.
So scratch that option. Like most, it does nothing useful for me now (and I hope I don't have to touch the amounts in my variable accounts for some time...that's my most-long-term quasi-savings account, intended to finance future construction projects--I call it "the Patio Fund").
Tonight, however, I seem to be able to retrace some steps were I thought I was making progress in the past. If I enter the Resources menu, it has a submenu Transactions and Forms, and I think there is promising stuff in there I will investigate tomorrow.
****
Logging back in to TIAA through Safari, my userid is always misremembered, showing up a 8 asterisks though my actual userid is longer. I have to start by deleting the asterisks and typing in my actual userid. If I forget to do that, things could get complicated. After re-entering my correct userid and password, it doesn't matter whether I check the box to remember my userid or not, the next time Safari will show thost same 8 asterisks again. Quite possibly the first time I tried to log in to TIAA back in October or so, I first tried an 8 character userid, and Safari or something can't seem to get that out of it's memory cache, no matter how times I check or uncheck the "remember userid" box subsequent to that.
Going through Chrome, it does remember my correct userid (I didn't make a mistake the first time on Chrome as I had for Safari) and even my password, but then has me perform some trick like identify all the stop lights in a picture. Sometimes these pictures are not very obvious, and I have to go through two or more of them before passing the test. I'd rather simply type in my password (though it may well be, even if Chrome didn't remember my password, I'd still have to do the "stoplight" test).
*****
