File this under 'getting the runaround'
Posted
Jan 03 2008, 06:03 PM
by
Karen Datko
Have you had a bad day? You might feel better if you read the tales of two personal-finance bloggers who were caught in bureaucratic nightmares. The hospital told One Frugal Girl three hours before a scheduled medical procedure that her insurance wouldn't pay for it, even though the insurance company had said it would. The headline on her post says it all: "Another horrific day at the hospital." Lynnae's lament at Being Frugal is about credit cards. She was charged a late fee and assigned a higher interest rate because she made her payment too early.
The devil is in the details of both posts, but we'll share some highlights. After a frantic series of phone calls, One Frugal Girl thought the issue of payment was resolved. But the hospital receptionist rudely insisted she had to pay the cashier $500. The cashier said that wasn't so. "But when we returned to the receptionist, she refused to hear what we had to say, despite the fact that we handed her the business card of the cashier and urged her to call for confirmation," One Frugal Girl wrote. In the end, she forked over $1,000 and was told to expect to pay a lot more.
An excerpt from Lynnae's conversation with the credit card people will clue you in to her nightmare. She said: "So, let me get this straight. I switch to paperless billing on your site. I don't receive my statement on time, so I take the pre-emptive measure of paying my bill to avoid a late fee. It ends up being a couple of days early, so it doesn't count, and now I lose my interest rate, because I'm a good customer?"
