Me vs. the insurance company part 1
I know you all totally miss my stories of my ongoing battle with Cingular. I know, I totally miss telling said stories. But as I have not really had any major complaints with Verizon, there has been a severe lacking in my posts regarding my battles with large corporations. The most exciting thing that ever happened with Verizon is that we tried to switch our phones at the Verizon store and they said they "couldn't match" the internet offer that we had gotten from Verizon. So we used the internet offer, and, lo and behold, a few short days later we got our new phones. Presto. No problems.
Anyway, I know I can't go very long without having to be rather irritated with large corporations so this week's installment is Me vs My Former Employer/Insurance Company.
I terminated employment with My Former Employer (henceforth referred to as MFE) in July. To be exact, July 14. My supervisor at MFE somehow thought it was July 12, whatever, which was sort-of a hassle, sort-of a blessing. For example, upon getting to work on July 14, I couldn't get into the building, and all of my accounts had been shut down. But, on the plus side, I couldn't do ANY work the ENTIRE day. It was great. I got paid for 8 hours of pure NOTHING.
MFE consequently terminated my health/dental/life insurance on July 12, and initially did not pay me for the 13th and 14th (a vacation day as well as a day of sort-of work...hey, I was there, it counts as work, not my problem I couldn't do any work). The pay sorted itself out after about a month of emailing/calling my former supervisor...and I made about $50 out of the deal. If you get paid less, they take fewer taxes out! Hurray! But anyway.
So, MFE was very quick to terminate me from the insurance policy...however I'm still waiting on the COBRA information. I know, it's been five months. I think they've gone long past the point of being slow, and now are probably breaking several laws. When they termed me off my mom's insurance after I graduated from college, I had to sign something to waive my rights to COBRA. I haven't signed that with MFE...and I'm now on policy #2 since quitting. My temporary policy gave me the coverage letter within a few days of the term date which was pretty sweet. But nothing from my former employer on their COBRA information. Huh. THAT'S weird. I actually used to WORK FOR AN INSURANCE COMPANY! You would THINK they would know the rules. Because if they don't know the rules, god help the rest of us....
So anyway, today I got home from work and found three envelopes with the logo from MFE. "Sweet," I thought, foolishly, "they are finally offering me COBRA."
Oh silly silly me. Why would they offer me COBRA?? It's not like they are LEGALLY REQUIRED TO DO SO or anything. NO WORRIES. They definitely sent me THREE letters, one dated Nov 30, one Dec 2, and one Dec 4...which I got all three today, I know, weird...saying that they had previously requested a receipt from me for some meds I bought using my FSA card back in June. They have now "reminded" me that I need to send them those receipts (who knows where the hell those are, I bought that stuff in JUNE!!!).
Never mind that I haven't gotten my COBRA information. Never mind that I haven't gotten my letters of prior coverage that I should really be submitting to my current insurance company. Never mind that they screwed me out of 16 hours of pay initially....
Never mind that I USED TO WORK FOR AN INSURANCE COMPANY. Sweet, I am so ready to call those fuckers tomorrow. This battle is ON!!!!
- posted by L. @ 11:23 PM