by on May 4, 2009

Read the Fine Print, and Don’t Forget About It

What!?Let’s set the stage for a tale of a 3-hour tour I took today. Imagine you have a physically and medically exhausting genetic condition that necessitates 16+ specialist visits per year, well over $2k/mo in prescription medications, and a PPO insurance plan that is just shy of costing the same as a second mortgage. Now imagine you just received a letter in the mail from your health insurance company that informs you that your recent doctor’s visit was not covered due to said condition and that no expenses due to said condition will be covered for the first year after enrollment in the plan.

My wife and I are complete and total medical opposites; she’s only been to the ER once, can count her lifetime usage of antibiotics on one hand, and doesn’t even like doctors. Every fiber of me wanted that for one year. Just one year.

That’s not exactly true, though, because there were fibers that were upset with the insurance, upset that I’d left my office job, upset that I might have chosen the wrong insurance plan, and upset that I am not independently wealthy to pay for my own condition by the age of 30. Okay, the last one was ridiculous, but those fibers were there, too.

After two hours of discussion our options and mentally and emotionally preparing to call my old boss, I looked up our plan details since our paperwork didn’t mention anything about that clause. After 20 minutes of searching, I found the page that states that prior creditable coverage within 63 days of enrollment waives the exclusion.

Shoot, we didn’t have any lapse at all! What gives!?

A quick call to customer service and I was in touch with a rep. within 3 minutes. I told her about the letter and that we had continuous coverage with them for the last 9 years, and wondered if that didn’t count as “creditable” coverage. She immediately saw my previous plans with starting and ending dates and was prompt to apologize for any inconvenience and anguish the letter had caused.

Now THAT’S customer service!

The company?

Aetna.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Personal Tagged With: , , , , ,
by on May 1, 2009

We Aren’t Criminals, Sam’s Club

sams-club-logoBack in June of 2007, I wrote about a guy who was tired of being stopped at the door of Sam’s Club in “Sir, May I See Your Receipt?” I normally don’t mind the procedure too much, but two of the last two times at our Sam’s Club has brought down my hammer upon their heads.

A month ago we were stopped at the door like everyone else, and she nicely pointed out that they had not rung up one of our stacks of drinks. How they missed an entire stack, I don’t know, so we walked right up to the customer service counter and ran another receipt for them. Yesterday was on an entirely different level.

The finger-pointer counted our items, looked at the receipt, and then counted the items again. And again. And again. Seriously, four times! And then she pulled out a man-sized set of kahones and asked us if we had another receipt for our items. /blink, blink… NO! She put our receipt on a bin by the door and told us to go to the counter and pay for our missing items: 48 cans of Fanta Orange… on the top of all of the other items. Not like we paid for our cart and pushed 300-400 lbs of drinks ALL the FRIGGIN’ way back to the BACK WALL of the store to grab $14.21 of additional drinks after we already dropped $131. If we’re good for that much, I think we can scrape up enough for 2 more cases, lady.

So we stood in line right there in front of her growing line of other suspected criminals, as if we’d done something wrong, for a full three minutes before deciding to go through checkout again. Getting there, we realized we didn’t have a receipt for the rest of the stuff, so I had to convince the clerk that I just needed two cases rung up (I’m sure the receipt Nazi would stop us if we tried to exit with a receipt showing two items, dude).

Arriving back at the exit, she grabbed our receipt as I told her I didn’t appreciate having to communicate to the checkout guy that I’d already paid for the rest of it but that you were holding on to our proof, for some reason. *Duct tape your head now, last warning* She pointed at the “customer service” counter and said we could have just gone there. We both turned around and I pointed and exclaimed in a pretty pissed off tone that those people had been in line ahead of us the whole time and were still standing there.

“Oh, sorry.”

Filed Under: Common Sense, Customer Service, Personal Tagged With: , , , ,
by on April 29, 2009

American Idol Season 8 Top 5 Predictions

Allison - photo from AmericanIdol.comWell, that certainly mixed things up a tad with respect to the Top 3. Considering last night’s performances only, Kris out sang and out-showed Allison. I didn’t think her innocence that should have been there was present at all: she was dressed like a hooker and her phrasing was all broken up like she out out of breath. It was not half as good as the same song on “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

As much as I like Allison, I think Matt has rebounded since he got voted off and saved. She’s been in the Bottom 3 enough times to make me throw her under the bus. Kris has such a following, I have to say that he’s safe, too. You know where I’ll be at 8:00 EST tonight. 🙂

Filed Under: American Idol Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
by on April 23, 2009

Don’t Settle For Poor Service

I’ve been a pushover for most of my life. There, I said it, now let’s move on. I have spent the majority of my life receiving sandwiches with mayo and onions when I said to leave them off, ice in my drinks after requesting the absence of ice, and a myriad of other service-related oversights and outright slaps. The problem was that I still paid and either didn’t enjoy my product or didn’t eat all, if any, of it.

That has changed, and it wonderfully started changing when I met my wife. I say “started” because it wasn’t too long ago that I still fell into old habits more than a man nearing 30 should. I started taking my food back to the counter or back to the kitchen. I discovered that returning an item at the store does not cause a rift in the universe. Did you know that you can return a toaster after 2 years? Inside family story, but true, nonetheless.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Personal, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , ,
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