Communication with bureaucrats

[pegkerr]

Someone tell me not to send this:

Dear Securian:

Here is the receipt you requested for the $4.06 I charged to my health savings account credit card. This was a payment made over the phone to _______ pharmacy, which was calling to explain that they had messed up my billing: something had been duplicated, so part was being reversed, and if I just paid $4.06, we would be square. I actually think it's kind of amazing, given everything that's been going on for me, that I thought to ask them to send me a receipt. Good thing they did, considering your warning that if I do not send you this documentation within 45 days, you will cancel my health savings card AND inform my employer. I find this threat oddly amusing, considering I have bigger problems. My husband is dead, just one of the twenty or so Explanation of Benefits statements I've recently received notes charges of $618,000 +, and they still haven't straightened out the billing mess. But anyway, here is your proof that I properly spent that $4.06 on something related to medical costs.

Choke on it.

Comments

[aome]

I'm inclined to say "take out the 'choke on it' line and leave the rest" but I also know there's some poor schmuck on the other end who is just doing his/her job because s/he is told to, so don't shoot the messenger.

On the other hand, I really REALLY hope those $618K bills are mostly (entirely!) covered, and soon.

Do I need to send more scones?

[tassie_gal]

Yup - those types of things are ongoing. I think the classic in our household was when Mum was trying to change the phone account over from Dad's name to hers. The call centre in the Phillipines said it could not be done unless they talked to the account holder. My mother, totally exasperated by this point, still missing my Dad, and trying to sort out everything replied "Well, if you can get me a direct line to heaven, I can put him on the phone for you...if you cant do that, then you just have to trust me he is dead!"

[pameladean]

I too would take out the last line, which is actually fairly nicely implied by the previous paragraph, and send it. I don't know why companies should always get away with this garbage with no push-back, and if it gives the powerless person who has to deal with it to think, that's all for the better.

P.