Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Can't anyone do their jobs anymore?

Our son's car, a 95 Mitsubishi, broke down on Interstate 94 almost a month ago now, and my husband went out to rescue him, gave him our Impala to take to work while hubby waited for the tow truck. He had it towed back here to where we live since he said it would be better to have it repaired at a place where we have all of our car work done. So, he paid the umpteen dollars in towing to have it brought all the way from the north side to the south side because he assumed that we would get good and reliable service like we usually do.

Well...they have had the car since February 12th and it's still waiting for a distributor to be delivered. This is getting to be totally ridiculous. I don't know why these people have not been more diligent in finding a part for this car. If the place they ordered from is not delivering, why are they not trying to find the part someplace else. Finally taking matters into his own hands, Jon ordered the part himself online and should be delivered to our house any day now. Then I have to take the part over to the car repair so they can put it in the Mitsubishi and get it fixed so we can get our Impala back from our son.

It's like this with everything nowdays. We have to do everyone's work for them whether it be doctor's billing offices to telling people how to ring crap up at the grocery store and how much change to give us. Doesn't anyone know anything? Or are they simply just lazy and don't have the work ethics they had when we were young?

The doctor's billing office story is a frustrating one. All of my bills from September are all settled and paid except for one medical group. They were paid by the insurance company but instead of putting the insurance payments in the insurance paid column, they put those amounts in "balance due" and sent us a bill for double payment. When we sent letters explaining what they had done, they simply threw them away or something and sent us another bill saying "second notice" then another one "third notice". Finally, they called me and demanded the money they were already paid by insurance. I tried to explain to the office bitch on the phone that it was paid already and it is THEIR mistake, an accounting error. She would not listen and kept saying we have to pay the bill. I finally told her to call my husband. So, they did...and simply told him that we have to pay the amount that was already paid. He tried to explain and was getting pretty pissed off, but they would not listen. Finally, we called the insurance company and reported them for fraud...trying to collect funds from us that were already paid. The snotty bitch then would not listen to the insurance company when they tried to prove that they had paid the bill! The insurance company then faxed over evidence of payment so we will see how that goes.

Jon says he would love to see this go before a judge. He would be pretty ticked off at taking up the courts time for a bookkeeping error they refuse to correct.

3 comments:

Julie Kwiatkowski Schuler said...

Oh! That makes me so angry for you. I live in horror that our car will break down. It always takes longer and costs more than they say. And medical bills! Yikes! I can hardly make out what the insurance mailings say, let alone match them up with the bills!

Stardust said...

Hi julie! Thanks for taking time to read and comment.

Yes, the doctor thing is quite maddening. We have bills strewn all over the table, afraid to file anything till the whole ordeal is settled. The insurance company has filed an appeal for us and are investigating the medical group. It's all so unreasonable. All they have to do is review their bookkeeping records and match them to the insurance documents and they would clearly see their error. But the one woman in the office is a total bitch. She will not listen to reason, she does not want to be wrong. grrrr!

There is also one doctor bill we have from a doctor I never saw when was in the hospital. Never laid eyes on him, yet his office says I owe him money for looking at my chart. So, they think any yo ho can come look at my chart and I am supposed to fork over $200? This dude isn't even on the insurance plan and I have no idea who he is. If I ever go in the hospital again, we are going to have a page on the top of my chart that says doctors who are not on the plan who do not get pre-approved permission from patient will not be paid.

Some doctors are crooks and thieves as much as any other profession.

Stardust said...

oh...and yes, car crap is bad too.