When it Rains it Pours
I’d been prepared to write this HUGE diatribe about certain companies with which I do business, because several of them had issues all at once. However, I managed to resolve them all with a couple of phone calls.
Dontcha hate it when diplomacy takes all the wind out of your sails? 
Anyway, I can look at it all with a new perspective, and I think it has to do with miscommunication and training: Miscommunication on either part, and training on theirs.
The shower of stress began with the mail I picked up one afternoon. In it, I’d received a letter from United Concordia and one from USAA. The former made me angry, the latter merely frustrated me. I was already a bit stressed by the fact that Sweetie had gone AFK for a while, and certain activities at church were getting under my skin more than usual. Negligence on the part of businesses was the last thing I wanted to deal with. Negligence on the part of both of us just irritated the situation (I’d also gotten a call from AAA a few days before, needing my new address so they could send me my renewal bill. Oops).
First, United Concordia: I couldn’t enroll online, because I’m not the service member. Not even dependents with a Power of Attorney (POA) can enroll that way. I don’t quite understand that. It probably requires a signature card that you print out and fax or mail in, which still calls for that extra step that the dependent has to take, anyway. SO, I printed out the enrollment form and filled it out by hand. Then, I printed out my POA — double-sided, to save paper — and mailed it all in. I even mailed it well before the cutoff date, so I could be enrolled by April 1.
The letter I received — two of them, actually, one to me and one to my husband to notify him of the letter they sent me (I had to roll my eyes at that) — said that they could not process my enrollment, because they did not receive both pages of my POA. They enclosed another enrollment form and an envelope. The letter — dated March 29, nine days after the cutoff — told me to enclose the POA in single-sided copies. I was also to enclose the new enrollment form and a new premium payment (I’d thought, at the time, that I’d sent a check with the original enrollment). And, of course, this would all be processed so I could have dental insurance on May 1st.
The more I thought about it, the more it angered me. I sent them a double-sided POA. They never said to send it single-sided. Now, I’m pretty sure that computers do not receive the mail, open it, and process it. If that were the case, I could forgive this. However, I have reason to believe it is not a crime to walk to a copy machine and make the copy of the other side of the paper, so you can have two single sides without going through the extra postage and trouble of notifying someone that they didn’t send in the proper POA form — especially since they said to enclose a photocopy.
Once my ire cooled and I felt like I could handle it in a diplomatic fashion, I called United Concordia and had the issue fixed in minutes. They still had my old enrollment form, we figured out that I had not sent a check, but bank card information, which made for less of an ordeal than it could have been, and I was able to simply fax in two pages of my POA. I called back the next day — even got the same guy I’d talked to the day before — and made sure they got both pages and processed it right then. I now have my cards, and, beginning in May, can see a dentist.
It was seriously the stupidest company issue I’ve ever had to deal with. I entitle it “Too Lazy To Make a Photocopy”. That, or “We Lost the POA, and Are Not Going To Admit It”.
The second issue, the one with USAA, was merely a misunderstanding after I’d worked out a previous banking issue. I hadn’t specified that I needed to be put under my husband’s card under his member number as an authorized user, NOT that I needed a replacement card under MY member number.
I’ve always had exemplary service from them when I’ve called, but maybe my tone after dealing with United Concordia kinda threw off the ambiance. 
I tried to explain the situation, but when I mentioned that my husband and I had had a single member number before I signed up for a card under my own name, she went off on an explanation that that first member number had never been “ours”, it had been “his”. That was how it worked.
I bit my tongue before I “explained” to her that it was I who had called for the insurance quote and set up ALL the accounts on that member number, not to mention paid every bill. Granted, it was his money and he is the service member, but, dang it, I have the POA and I own him! It is OUR number. But there was no point in getting stuck over semantics, so I let it slide. She was nice enough after that, and we got it all worked out. I now have a copy of the emergency credit card and am a signer on that account. The credit card they sent me before is the exact copy of the one I already have, so I didn’t have to replace it. Great. Two down, one to go.
I had to call AAA to renew my membership and fix my address on the account. By the way, if you ever have to call AAA in WA, DO NOT get that 1-800 mixed up with 1-888. If you dial 1-888 and the rest of the number, you get a sex-talk line. Yeah, not what I was expecting. Guess it’s time to get a new glasses prescription.
ANYway, that was an easy communication, until it got to the point where I was trying to renew online and still had my CA member number. They had allowed me to renew here when I got back, and said to just keep the card until I had to renew in April. There’s probably a piece of mail that I’d received that I misplaced with my new number on it, but oh well. They were really cool and helpful, but I thought the misdialed number was funny enough to recount the story.
A couple days later, the next issue I managed to close had been one I’d been communicating with the company about for a few days. Sweetie had ordered some prescription sunglasses, but measured his own pupil distance. The company was able to tell that he had probably given them a flawed measurement (“it would be expected on a small woman or a child” was the exact description), but I didn’t get advice on how to get a better one until after Sweetie had already left his current version of civilization.
I Googled for the eye doctor we’d gotten both our prescriptions and glasses from while we still lived in Vancouver about four years ago (those were the glasses he still had when he left home in November, so I figured it was my best shot, before actually hunting down the optometrist who ordered his glasses at Ft. Sill). When I called, I found out that pupil distance doesn’t change in adults, and that the clinic still had our records four years later. Yippee! I called the sunglass company and they expedited the order. So, hopefully, his sunglasses should arrive at the same time the over-the-glasses variety I picked up at Wal-Mart (because they’re the only ones who carry them) gets there.
After that win for the day, I tackled The Big One. I had recently discovered that my Verizon bill was all sorts of screwed up, but was waiting for this month’s bill to come out so I could make sure they hadn’t discovered it themselves and fixed it. Heh, yeah. I AM an optimist.
The problem had originally occurred when I had Sweetie added to my account. The person who had done so put him in as the primary user on the account, even though I’d had the account for the past two years before he was added, and he decided to get a cell phone, too, a week after I’d renewed mine. The primary user thing was a minor annoyance, but became an issue when he had to leave the country for an extended period of time.
I’d called in late February to have his number suspended for a period of time. He’s in the military, and with all the military action going on, you’d think they’d have a provision for that. However, I got Clueless Guy on the phone, who not only managed to mess up the billing but also told me that I was going to have to call in every 90 days and pay $15 every time in order to keep his suspension going.
Now, I’ve been in billing before. I know it can be a bit confusing, which is why I’m blaming this on training. If the guy had been trained fully, he would have better known what he was doing and would have known about the military suspension, which is different from the temporary suspension. The billing program is probably just as confusing, anyway, but the fact that I had TWO people tell me that they couldn’t suspend for any indefinite amount of time tells me that the military suspension is something relatively new or not well-known (or well-used).
When I called on the 11th of this month, I was prepared to ask for a billing supervisor, but the guy on the other end sounded much more confident than the guy I’d talked to before. I told him I had a HUGE billing problem. He asked me if he should be sitting down for it, and I told him that would probably be a good idea. In a few moments, he was able to fix the billing problem — the primary had been suspended without billing, leaving me paying for every minute I used outside the IN network, which were many in February and March, before my home phone was connected — and he credited back my account. He also fixed my last name, which has been without an ‘e’ at the end since I got the account. NO ONE had been able to fix that so far, and I’d asked several times of many different people. They had all tried to fix the account name, not the user name.
He also put Sweetie’s number on military suspension, and was practically appalled that someone was going to charge me, a military wife, $15 dollars every 90 days that my husband — who was out protecting our country — was gone. I KNEW they had to have a military provision! I just had to get the right person on the phone!
And, since I guess account holder and user are two different entities on a Verizon account, I never had to provide my POA to suspend my husband’s number. That’s a good thing. I was going to be really mad if I had to provide a POA for what had been MY account in the beginning.
So, for the most part, billing issues are worked out. Puget Sound Energy is still run by monkeys, but no amount of complaining is going to change that, unfortunately. It’s just one of those universal realities, like death and taxes.
This isn’t much of a rant, but I wanted to record it, anyway. The joys of a military wife. Yay.
April 21st, 2006 at 4:49 pm
I’m sorry it’s being so difficult for you, but I’m glad that things are finally working themselves out. It sounds like you were well past ready for your little trip. And we really do have to make plans to see each other on purpose, rather than just happening to run into each other out in town! Love, Mom C