"Your Call is Important to Us"

If you believe that, I'd like to show you a couple of bridges I have for sale.

This has been a day of listening to inane recordings that some CEO thought would make us feel better while we're given a litany of choices, none of which are why we're calling in the first place, and no option for a human being to speak with. But I'm sure you're left with the warm & fuzzies knowing your call is important to them.

I understand that there's no one home at any of the California DMV's today. The terminator decided that to save money, he'd furlough the state worker bees, key word here being "workers". Of course, we have the drones (or legislators) who do nothing and are at the hive in Sacramento only occasionally anymore; we have NO budget - again, but apparently they need their exorbitant paychecks to keep up the good life and the worker bees - not so much, after all they just waste it on keeping a roof over their heads and feeding their kids. So I spend a half an hour trying to find out how to replace my registration sticker for my license plate just to learn it's a furlough day. But I can drive down to the city and AAA will take care of everything right then and there. Oh good, a 2 hour drive in triple digit weather. Now I know what I'm doing tomorrow morning.

Onward and upward. As long as I'm raising my blood pressure, I think I'll call my medical insurance carrier. This, of course, is another "your call is important to us, so just press all the various buttons we can think of and, maybe, someone will accidentally answer you". The incident happened in February and was just the other side of the border in Ensenada, Mexico. It took until June to gather the paperwork I needed to file a claim with Cigna to cover the payment I had to make up front to the mexican hospital and others. The claim was received by Cigna on June 4th with every document known to man attached. When I called (again) last week, the word went to the claims manager who was told the adjustor didn't have everything he/she needed. The file was gone through and, what do you know ... it's all there. Now they're working on it and hope to have "something" for me by, are you ready?, the end of the month.

Here's the kicker - you know why it takes so long and why you can't talk with the individual handling your claim? They're out of the country. Our medical claims are outsourced to another country. Well, duh, if they can't speak, read, or write english, let alone medical terms, most likely it's going to take a little time to get the claim processed. And we need to remember they aren't the ones waiting for a couple of thousand dollars to be reimbursed either, so no rush. But I feel all warm and fuzzy knowing my call was important to them.

Having gotten my day off to a great start, it seems to me that with 10% or better unemployment, somehow outsourcing our medical claims along with every other job we used to do in this country, is just plain wrong. Just saying.

And the representative finished with; and I leave you readers with, "Have a nice weekend!"