Should have been posted 12/31/21 – 1/1/22 (Oops!)
I’ve always been the kind of person that likes to clean things up before the new year. Case in point – a bill from a Dr. appointment I had in January, believe it or not. Now, I’m blind, so I listen to my mail on a reading machine.
The reading machine said something about overdue, collections, garbled, garbled. I managed to figure out the telephone number for the billing department and tried to call them. For 3 days. Answer machine here leave message there, would I like to mark this message as urgent?
I called, I threatened, I begged. Finally, I asked for help from a local social work agency. This woman has been working with me on and off and she’s a gem. She took the information and she called.
No answer. She finally emailed them with an encrypted email. Whammo! I received a call from the billing department – what a surprise… He looked up my accountant said that I owed $37.50, would I like to pay now?”
If you look at the bill, you’ll notice that my secondary insurance carrier was not billed”.
He had me hold on and he looked and noticed that although they had my secondary insurance card information on file, they neglected to bill the secondary carrier. He didn’t know why. I asked him what he wanted me to do about this bill. He said to ignore it and that he would take it out of collections, wait for them to bill the secondary insurance and then resend the ending bill.
Well, this doesn’t help my blood pressure… It reminded me of another time when the secondary insurance carrier wasn’t billed and they actually did send me to collections. I caught it early enough so that their lawyer didn’t charge me for services.
Another incident had me trying to explain to the hospital that I was only there that day for lab work. Why was I being billed for a hospital telephone? They sent me to the fraud unit. The fraud unit realized that I was not admitted to the hospital, and removed the charge. They said they were very sorry, someone tried to scan me by making me pay for their telephone bill when they were in the hospital.
All of this goes to show you why you need to look at your bills. Your accounts. Not only your savings and checking account – any bill you receive. Especially these days!
Unless you choose to be magnanimous and pay for someone else’s Christmas presents… I don’t think things will change much in 2022.
As always, be diligent, safe, socially distant. Wash those hands, and please wear a mask!
Happy 2022,
Deborah E Joyce
Author of “Identity Theft A Victims Search For Justice”
Available on Audible, Bard, and Amazon