Customer Service - The Lack Thereof

Customer Service - The Lack Thereof

Ok here I go. This has been brewing for quite some time and today is the day. Today’s thoughts were inspired by having to deal with Blue Cross Blue Shield yesterday. Actually, Steve did most of the “dealing with” and I mostly paced and ranted.

Let’s go back a few weeks here. Remember when I was so excited about getting my life together? Doctor appointments, medication for my depression, and therapy to get my head shrunk. Well, at my first therapy session, my therapist told me to check and make sure that we are covered. So, like a good little dogooder, I came home and went to the BCBS website, opened up the 2010 benefit book, and started doing the research. We are in NO way financially able to pay 200+ a week for therapy, so it was very important that I got this right.

Alrighty, in the search menu I type “cognitive therapy”…woohoo there it was, page 41. I read the entire page. Standard option, covered up to 75 visits per year $20 copay. YES!! That we can afford. I read the entire page, looking for any loopholes..newp. Everything looks fantastical. So I proceed, 4 visits total for myself and 4 for Delaney.

Now it takes a while for the therapist to submit charges, and us to get the “explanation of benefits” thingie in the mail. Yep, you guessed it DENIED. All of a sudden this treatment requires pre-approval. Panic set in pretty quick when I started adding up what this meant if we had to pay this out of pocket. A balance of $760 dollars after the co-pay we already paid.

I went back to the book with Steve, back to the page about therapy, and again we found nothing about “pre-approval” required. WTF? Now that we knew what we had to look for, we looked at the entire book and found one tiny paragraph on page 16, in with the general information, that states that mental health treatment needs pre-approval. Why isn’t on the same damned page as where the mental health BENEFITS are listed? Side note, this change was just made January 1, 2010.

This was at about 4:30 in the afternoon, btw. So, Steve gets on the phone. BCBS is closed (of course) but the company that they use for mental health (Magellen) is open. He explains the situation, and they basically said “Gosh too bad for you”, and blamed BCBS and my therapist. They were rude to Steve, and absolutely no help whatsoever, and told us to call BCBS in the morning. (Yes, I stewed about this all night)

Fast forward to 8:30 yesterday morning. Steve gets on the phone with BCBS, and starts trying to get answers. BCBS had to talk with Magellan… and they finally said they would back date the pre-approval 2 weeks. This only covers 1 visit for me, and 2 for Delaney…3 out of 8. Had Magellan done this the day before, it would have been 4 of 8. So, Steve had to fight with them again because he had called the day before, and they were no help whatsoever, and it’s gonna cost us another $100 bucks… “We’ll have to call you back.” They pretty much accused Steve of lying about making a phone call the night before, and had to go back in their records to find the call… in the end they added on the extra day and covered one more visit.

Then the person on the phone said something about “balance billing”. Steve asked for further explanation. Come to find out, since our therapist is a preferred provider, they cannot bill us for the balance of their fee, since they have a contract with BCBS. We were also informed that all Mental health providers had been briefed about this change, and in the end, the PROVIDER is responsible for making sure pre-approval is obtained. But of course when we asked for that in writing, they couldn’t possibly provide that. In the end they covered 4 of the 8 visits, and we were told we were not responsible for the other 4 due to the Provider’s mistake.

Steve talks with the therapist, tells her the deal with them back dating to cover 4 visits. “Alright, well let me look at my sliding scale here… ok so that means each visit will be $50, minus your $20 copay, that’s $30 per visit, so a $120 balance”… Steve says “I’ll pay that, but I want you to know that this is ME doing YOU a favor, because I know you are not allowed to balance bill us. We will take our share of the blame for this, and it’s important that we maintain a relationship with you because Delaney is going to continue to see you.” She didn’t seem very happy, but agreed. Oh, and that means that she charges people with insurance $115 per visit, but those without only pay $50, no wonder our Insurance is so outrageous, we’re subsidizing uninsured people.

Is it really our responsibility to know this stuff? We are not the experts here, yet the buck stops with the consumer. And who ends up paying…yep the consumer. Now the $120 bucks is way better than the original $760, but this was not our screw up. If Steve hadn’t stuck with it, they would have gladly let us pay that money without giving us the proper information.

Let me note that we pay $1200 a month for our insurance. That is roughly $15,000 a year. We a rarely go to the doctor, no chronic illness, and this is the first time we’ve ever used our insurance for anything other than the regular stuff. We’ve been with BCBS for 20+ years. Steve was treated like he was trying to steal from the company, they accused him of lying about the first phone call’s existence, and were basically rude and put out because they had to deal with a valid issue. He was very pleasant until they were rude to him, then he let it rip. Steve is no one to argue with, it’s like argument chess and he’s already got the next 4 moves all planned out. There is no escaping the eventual “check mate”. I hate it when I am the one arguing with him, but love to watch him work over someone else =)

We are considering moving to AETNA, but in reality, Customer Service sucks everywhere. You have to watch and double check everything because the company you are dealing with will inevitably drop the ball. When we moved, literally every entity we had to deal with screwed up. Realtors, title companies, mortgage companies, cable, phone, internet… it was an endless task of having to point out & fix mistakes being made by these people dropping the ball, messing up our move, and costing us time and money. We had issues with these companies both on the selling and buying side, both on the shutting down and starting up of new services. Don’t get me started on the foreign reps that you can’t frigging understand. By the time we were finally moved in with everything turned on, I was to the point of immediately asking for an actual American supervisor, and skipping the first person who can’t do shit for you anyway. Oh, and I skipped the nicely trying to explain stuff too, I went straight to bitch mode. I was going to get there anyway, might as well save everyone some time, right?

Isn’t it the job of Customer Service to SERVICE the CUSTOMER? Aren’t we as consumers the ones who keep their business up and running by giving them our money? When we pay for something, shouldn’t we actually GET what we are paying for. Shouldn’t these company employees be thanking us for keeping them in a job? If they hate their job so much, maybe they should give it to one of the unemployed people who would LOVE to have their job. They can say their attitude comes from dealing with angry people all day…well HELLO, if the company would get it right, and do what they are being paid to do, then you wouldn’t have angry customers. What ever happened to “the customer is always right.”

Cripe, the Walmart employees get pissed off when they have to unlock something from the shelf that we’d like to buy. I can’t buy it unless they unlock it, if I can’t buy it, the store doesn’t get my money, if enough people get fed up with getting attitude every time they need something unlocked… then someone’s going to lose their job due to lack of money. Do I really need to feel badly for interrupting someone to shop at a store? Since when am I no longer the main concern as a money toting consumer?

Something is seriously wrong in this country. The small business man who actually gives good service can’t hardly stay in business, and these enormous companies can treat their customers like shit and still do just fine. We need to start standing up for ourselves, and try to shop where we are respected for being the consumer we are. I know this impossible all the time, ya gotta shop where you can afford it, but when possible… boycott bad service, and at the very least make a phone call or talk to a supervisor when you get bad service. I have no problem telling a company that I will never shop with them again, and that I’ll tell my friends that their service sucks. I have no problem complaining, we have to, or it will just continue to get worse.

It’s our money, we work hard for it, companies are not entitled to our money, they are lucky we choose to spend it with them, and we should be treated accordingly.

Lastly, if it gets too bad dealing with Customer Service…wine helps dull the pain a little….