I knew I was in trouble when I was given a card with instructions on how to QUICKLY and EASILY transfer money into yet another money-transfer service. I’m only just now coming to terms with PayPal, Venmo, and Square, and I still can’t get PayPal to work on my phone. This new service that I’d never heard of was the only service that took payment for court-related costs. They couldn’t make it easy, like simply going to the courthouse and writing a check. No, this is government we’re talking about.

With fear and trepidation, I entered the website information—which actually came up—and carefully followed the instructions, navigating the less-than-easy-to-follow directions. After several minutes of doing exactly what I was told, I came to the horrible realization that this process involved more than simply entering my credit card information. When I got to the end, a voucher was prepared for me. I had to take this voucher to an authorized establishment, where they accepted these vouchers for payment. Swell. I clicked on the nearest places.

Although Dollar General was the closest, I opted to use Walmart customer service because they surely had more experience in dealing with these vouchers. I made the trek to Walmart and waited in line. I began to feel less assured in Walmart’s ability to make this a quick and easy transaction when the customer service representative looked at the voucher as if she’d never seen anything like this before. Nevertheless, she made a valiant attempt and even told me I could use a debit card instead of having to make another trek to the bank to take out cash or get a cashier’s check. Yay! Something was going right!

Okay, so far, so good, but I wasn’t ready to let my guard down yet. She asked for a picture ID, although I’m unsure why you have to verify who you are to SEND money. Who cares WHO sends the money as long as it is sent? She typed in all my information, which took forever, and then asked for the account number. I gave it to her, and it showed up on the card terminal for my approval. I punched the YES button. She then tried to put in the amount of money I wanted to send. That’s when things went south.

“I’m getting a message this is an invalid account number,” she said.

We redid all the steps, and again, the invalid account number popped up. She called over a manager who fiddled for several minutes without results and then told me to call the number on my paperwork.

I called the number and was put on hold forever, as my call got transferred to five different people while customers were backing up behind me and giving me dirty looks. The person at the top of the food chain typed in the account number and said it was correct. I explained the situation, and she said she didn’t know what the problem was unless the amount of money I wanted to send was over the limit of what the service would accept. Apparently, they can only accept a limited amount of money. WHAT???

“Why didn’t they specify that on their website?” I asked. “They even printed a voucher for me with the amount I’m trying to pay. Why didn’t I receive a pop-up that this amount was over the limit?

She didn’t know. But then, this is a government service, so why should she know?

I told the customer service representative to try entering a different amount.

“That’s not the problem,” she said. “It won’t let me proceed beyond the account number.”

I think my head exploded at that point. I thanked her (I think—I might have still been smoldering) and walked to my car, where I banged my head against the steering wheel.

If you heard a loud scream the other day coming from the direction of Walmart parking lot, that was me trying to transfer money quickly and easily.