Stupid insurance -- Day 2
After last night's bloggy breakdown, Dada and I said, 'nuff with that. Resolve this insurance hoo-hah TODAY, dern it.
To get to the root of the problem, first I called BlueCross BlueShield and spoke with a human. Previously I had just tried to enter our "member ID number", pulled seemingly out of a hat, through their telephone system to be told that it wasn't recognized. In direct contrast to the telephone experiences outlined in the previous post, the human I spoke with was not only cordial and helpful, but was able to make suggestions to help me more directly get answers. The real answer? We are NOT in their system, meaning the HR people didn't turn in our insurance application.
Then I finally remembered how long it took me to get my initial O.B. appointment for my Isaac check-ups and decided it was better to just go ahead and make one now, and let my insurance catch up with me later. I called two clinics that take the insurance we should eventually have, and, again to my surprise, both receptionists were exceedingly nice and helpful. At the clinic I finally chose because it had the earlier appointment, the receptionist said, without provocation, "Let me go ahead and schedule your second visit while we're on the phone now." "Bless you, woman," I said.
For the nail in the casket, Isaac and I went to the Univ of Delaware HR office this afternoon with our Fight Face on (because we watched the Gilmore Girls last night, oh yeah). We told the receptionist about our problem, and she was clearly disturbed that things weren't working as they should. She promptly fetched THE lady in charge of health insurance applications for the whole university. Again I put up my dukes to no avail -- this lady was flat-out embarrased. She promised she would call BCBS to resolve the issue immediately, and then call me back about it before the end of the day. She kept her word, and left us a message with a new, not fake BCBS Member ID number. We will have our honest-to-God insurance cards in seven days.
Is it not so awful that I was so seriously disappointed by Dr. Suck and his staff that my whole approach to each of these situations was to expect confrontation and combativeness? Finally, today I found people who understand that I am a paying customer (gasp!) whose concerns deserve to be acknowledged and met (double gasp!). Thank you, fabulous customer service reps with whom I met or chatted today, for not making me want to kill you.
To get to the root of the problem, first I called BlueCross BlueShield and spoke with a human. Previously I had just tried to enter our "member ID number", pulled seemingly out of a hat, through their telephone system to be told that it wasn't recognized. In direct contrast to the telephone experiences outlined in the previous post, the human I spoke with was not only cordial and helpful, but was able to make suggestions to help me more directly get answers. The real answer? We are NOT in their system, meaning the HR people didn't turn in our insurance application.
Then I finally remembered how long it took me to get my initial O.B. appointment for my Isaac check-ups and decided it was better to just go ahead and make one now, and let my insurance catch up with me later. I called two clinics that take the insurance we should eventually have, and, again to my surprise, both receptionists were exceedingly nice and helpful. At the clinic I finally chose because it had the earlier appointment, the receptionist said, without provocation, "Let me go ahead and schedule your second visit while we're on the phone now." "Bless you, woman," I said.
For the nail in the casket, Isaac and I went to the Univ of Delaware HR office this afternoon with our Fight Face on (because we watched the Gilmore Girls last night, oh yeah). We told the receptionist about our problem, and she was clearly disturbed that things weren't working as they should. She promptly fetched THE lady in charge of health insurance applications for the whole university. Again I put up my dukes to no avail -- this lady was flat-out embarrased. She promised she would call BCBS to resolve the issue immediately, and then call me back about it before the end of the day. She kept her word, and left us a message with a new, not fake BCBS Member ID number. We will have our honest-to-God insurance cards in seven days.
Is it not so awful that I was so seriously disappointed by Dr. Suck and his staff that my whole approach to each of these situations was to expect confrontation and combativeness? Finally, today I found people who understand that I am a paying customer (gasp!) whose concerns deserve to be acknowledged and met (double gasp!). Thank you, fabulous customer service reps with whom I met or chatted today, for not making me want to kill you.
posted by Claire at 6:05 PM
3 Comments:
I find myself doing the same thing lately...EXPECTING to deal with rude and unhelpful people because of a few bad experiences. It is nice when you get a good one though! And I'm so glad to hear your insurance woes are finally getting straightened out.
This type of thing happens ALL the time in my company and us poor HR folks always get the blame!! We have nothing but problems with insurance companies because they have incompetent twits working for them. To give you an idea, I am the administrator of our plans and just joined the insurance in August and I still have no cards. I've made 3 attempts to call them and get it straigtened out and I still have received nothing. I've gone through these issues at the pharmacy, so I feel your pain! And so tomorrow I call again to see if the twits at the insurance company can manage to send me a 4th set because they're first 3 mailings somehow didn't get here!!
Oh, monkeygirl, I never meant to offend! I have dealt with some fine HR people in my day, and this lady in charge of contacting the insurance company really did seem to have her act together. But this HR department as a whole has set a pattern of delays and convoluted/nonsensical paperwork and processing that means that the hubs still doesn't have all his benefits in place. I think this insurance episode is symptomatic of the stupid HR bureacracy they have in place at this particular institution and in no way reflects upon HR people in general.
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