<p>This is just a rant. It sure seems like everyone is trying to take an extra buck from me! Feel free to add another ridiculous story of being over-charged!</p>
<p>Last month, I paid off my Macy’s charge. I just received a bill from them for $2.00. When I called to question the bill, the rep immediately took off the charge saying that the computer automatically does that because I had a balance for part of the month. I typically carry a balance for two or three months and then pay it off. I’ve never had the $2.00 charge before.</p>
<p>Two months ago, I had a mammogram, which is fully covered by insurance. The radiology company sent me an “estimated” bill for $32. I waited, assuming that once the insurance was billed it would be adjusted. Just received another bill today, still $32 after insurance paid. The insurance explanation of benefits says I owe zero. When I call the radiology company they said they would “send it for review” to see if they could adjust it. Huh?</p>
<p>Two weeks ago, I had a colonoscopy. Surgery center made me pay $540 before they would perform the procedure, stating that is the estimate of what the insurance won’t pay. I checked with insurance today and they paid 100%. I wonder how long I have to wait for a refund?</p>
<p>All these little charges add up to big bucks for the big companies!</p>
<p>CenturyLink sent me a postcard a couple of months ago adding a 99 cent fee onto each month’s internet bill. Then I got another postcard raising the rate by $2.00/month this week. I had a promotional deal with them for $20.00/month that just expired, so price went up $20 for that. So my internet bill has gone up $23.00, more than double what I was just paying. Going to look around for a new carrier.</p>
<p>It all works out in the end…I received a .02 cent refund check from At&T after we closed our account. It is hanging on our bulletin board for whenever we need a good laugh.</p>
<p>You will probably wait for that refund forever if you don’t call and ask for it, in my experience. I have had two experiences this year where I had to pay a medical bill out of pocket at the time of service because they insisted it would not be covered, and then I found out months later that they did bill my insurance anyway and get paid a second time. I almost wonder if they bank on me not opening my EOBs and following up.</p>
<p>Another doctor apparently just sent out a $50 bill for a missed appointment fee from a supposed appointment in June to half their patients even though none of us missed an appointment. I am waiting for them to “sort it out” and decide if I have to pay. If they insist I had an appointment I missed I am not sure what leg I will have to stand on in arguing, how can I argue I didn’t miss an appointment I didn’t know about? But I know I didn’t.</p>
<p>Then I got a letter from my student loan carrier informing me they accidentally set my loan repayment term for X+5 months instead of X and now it will be adjusted and my payment will be going up in January to compensate, but they haven’t told me how much.</p>
<p>This sort of stuff happens all the time and makes me ill. It is like your own money is greased and you can’t hold onto it while all the jerks are pulling it out of your hand. Even when you. don’t. owe. them.</p>
<p>I have been billed in full for a screening mammogram-after it was law to pay 100%. My husband got a flu shot at the hospital this year when he saw his dr. Supposed to be free under preventative. Charge? $600!! When I called BCBS, they said they had to call the local BCBS, who would call the provider (hospital), and they <em>might</em> recode it and resubmit–their call. WTH?</p>
<p>I’m a detail oriented , analytical person who sits at a desk and phone all day with a calculator. How non-numbers people who work in jobs where they can’t use the phone all day deal with this is even more mind boggling. I know a lot of people who give up and just pay the bogus charges.</p>
<p>I have now gotten my FOURTH different collection attempt for a medical bill that I apparently got in June of 2010. The problem with that? I wasn’t even in the US in June of 2010. I have fought it several times, and won every time. </p>
<p>It’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>Recently, I got a bill from a follow-up visit after my surgery. It was just supposed to be for my copay ($30) but ended up being over $150. I checked my BCBS account and saw that they hadn’t submitted it to my insurance. I called them up and the woman said “whoops! You’re right. Ok don’t worry about that bill.” So I asked if I should just send a check for the $30 for my copay. Her response? “No, we’ll just waive the bill.” What?!</p>
<p>When my son was born, he received a gift of two Disney shares. At that time there was no reinvestment option. Every year I would receive a dividend check for approximately $1.10. It always made me laugh.</p>
<p>We use a long distance company called SpotTalk. If we make less than $5.00 worth of calls, they charge us a $5 fee. Because of this, we are canceling them. Don’t they realize they are losing customers? Stupid.</p>
<p>My dentist always submits my claims backwards. We have two dental plans…my husband has one as primary, and I have the other. They always submit the wrong one first! Amazing. And I stop at the billing desk every time to remind them where to submit. </p>
<p>My husband was in an accident and was flown by Lifestar to the hospital. It was fully covered by our insurance, and the bill was paid. THREE years later, we got a Lifestar bill for $4500. Sorry…the insurance paid you once!</p>
<p>Re: refunds? Good luck. DD was admitted to the hospital within 30 hours of an ER visit. Our policy said an admission within 24 hours would have no ER copay. I politely called anthem and said that the surgeon who admitted my kid (and did immediate emergency surgery) said the kid should NEVER have been allowed out of that ER. Trouble was, anthem had the bill sent to me, and I had paid it. I NEVER received a refund from the hospital…4 years ago!</p>
<p>We dumped our dentist who decided that his clinic would charge everyone upfront for the full amount, bill the insurance and then refund the amount paid by the insurance.</p>
<p>I also got a $2.00 bill from Macy’s - I thought I mistyped the amount when I paid my bill in full last month. Hmmmm…</p>
<p>I have one. I went to a public flu shot clinic held at a local medical group. I paid a $20 co-pay (in cash) and got a receipt. Six months later I got a bill for the co-pay. I sent a copy of the receipt to the billing dept. Three months later the $20 was sent to a collection agency. After spending hours on the phone with the billing the dept–they discovered in the hand-written ledger (!!!) from the day of shot clinic the my co-pay had been credited to someone else whose name appeared on the same line, but opposite page of the ledger.</p>
<p>Eventually it was straightened out, but it tooks multiple phone calls and about 6 letters.</p>
<p>I agree 1000%. In fact I may have my own “rant” thread about this somewhere in the archives. To me, the analogy is more like I feel everyone is sticking their hand in my pocket trying to take my money. My cellphone bill had these $10 per month subscriptions appear periodically. Sure, ATT reversed the charges when I caught them, but why do I have to go through my supercomplicated cellphone bill every month just to make sure no scammer has slipped in a bogus charge. I don’t think ATT should permit it. Every single service provider is constantly bumping up the rates. Time Warner decides to rent me my modem… thanks!</p>
<p>This is why I left B of A after 25 years. Remember a couple of years ago they were going to charge, I think, $5 a month for the privilege of using our debit cards? That was the last straw for me. I love my credit union. THEY pay ME. :)</p>
<p>This kind of stuff drives me nuts. I agree with sryrstress. What do people do who don’t have time to go over this stuff and argue it? Companies must make a fortune with those who just give up and pay.</p>
<p>I’m still dealing with a medical claim from April of 2012. It is now to the point where the collection agency is taking me to court. I have all the documentation to prove it is settled, but I swear the lawyers just think I’m going to give up. As a matter of fact, had they answered their phones a year ago, it probably wouldn’t have gotten this far.</p>
<p>I once closed an account towards the end of the month. On the last day of the month, they credited my account with $0.03 in interest and then sent me a statement every month for 2 1/2 years showing me my balance even though I called every month and told them to keep the three cents but to stop sending me statements. How much do you suppose that cost them?</p>
<p>On the flip side, both of my Ds worked at a restaurant for several summers. The owners were terrible book keepers and very disorganized. A few weeks ago (a full two years after either of them worked there) they both got a letter from a law firm. The restaurant had been sued for mistakes in salary and it became a class action. One of my Ds got a check for 450 dollars and the other 200! And those missing funds were from a 1 month period. Can’t imagine that my kids didn’t realize they were being stiffed at the time, but a nice Christmas bonus two years later!</p>
<p>Sorry, didn’t mean to take the wind out of your sales. Resume ranting!!!</p>
<p>OP.
My first comment is for “I typically carry a balance for two or three months and then pay it off. I’ve never had the $2.00 charge before.”
-why are you following such a strange procedure? Why not pay off every single month? If you pay every single month, then YOU make money out of Credit card company (since you use their money for free), otherwise, they make money on your usage of card.
Another comment is about insurance claims and EOB’s. There has not been a single claim as far as I remember for any member of my family that did not require my intervention. Never happened to me. In fact, I am calling today. Again and again and again. I do not see any reason to complain here. It has been going on for decades. In these decades, I have changed 9 places of employment. Both my H. and me have changed numerous Medical and Dental insurances. I take it back. One exception to this rule seems to be out experience with the vision insurer Spectera. This seems to be the only company that operates the way that expected of the insurance company. Forget the rest. And be prepared for the changes in amuch much worse direction. I feel lucky that one of my previous employer was actually Blue Cross, 8 year there, at least I know how to talk to them, do NOT refrain from screaming, very well deserved!!!</p>
<p>One thing that bugs me is Sprint charges you a $36 upgrade fee for a “free” upgrade! They also offer you a discount when you first sign up, but don’t tell you when it mysteriously vanishes a year or two later. </p>
<p>Medical billing is the craziest too. My D1 had her tonsils out and the facility gave her a letter saying that the payment would come to us and we should sign the check over for them and they would accept whatever insurance paid. Thank God I kept that letter! Two months later we get a bill from them for more than 24K! For just the facility fee for routine (no lasers or proton beams) surgery! She was only there for about 3 hours.</p>
<p>They said, “we know the insurance company issued you a check and that it has been cashed”. Well. Did they check further to see WHO had cashed the check? They had! I had to send them a xerox of both sides of the cancelled check (BCBS was very helpful here) and I asked them to send me a statement showing a balance of zero but they never did. It’s not the first time this has happened to me but what a huge amount of money to worry about.</p>
<p>I have never had an issue with any medical bill, ever. Maybe because I stick to my PPO and once I pay the co-pay, if there is one, that’s the end of it. When anything is covered 100% (flu shot, mammogram, etc., ) when I check out they tell me I owe nothing.</p>
<p>Insurance is a nightmare. I don’t even know how many hundreds of hours my dad has probably spent on the phone yelling at the health insurance company dealing with charges even years after the billing date. And when they finally get the hang of the routine, my mom’s health insurance career would change and it would start all over. (Pro tip: never be in the hospital over New Year’s when your insurance carrier changes. It’s a nightmare.) But the toughest is still having to fight with them over tens of thousands of dollars they want to charge us for months after my mom’s death. It’s hard to get closure and move on with that hanging over your head.</p>
<p>emilybee, you are lucky. I have a PPO but it doesn’t make things any easier. My doctors say copays are due at the time of service, and sometimes they let me pay them, other times they tell me I don’t owe anything even if I insist I know I owe my copay-- and then I get a bill in the mail, which sometimes I actually owe and sometimes I don’t, and it always comes six months later. I have to keep very detailed records of every appointment and whether or not they let me pay my copay while I was there, because they can’t keep it straight. I just went for a physical, they wouldn’t let me pay anything because they said physicals are covered, and I’ve now gotten two EOBs which say my insurance was charged $800, they paid $0, but I owe $0… I am just kind of waiting to see if I eventually get a bill or if nobody is paying that $800. Physicals SHOULD be covered in full so I will be annoyed if I do.</p>
<p>Then I have another doctor who insists I owe nothing at my appointment, I never ever get a bill, and when I call to ask they say I am paid up, and then when I go in a year later they say, “are you, like, ever going to pay your bill from last year?” They insist they sent the bill and I just didn’t recognize it because it comes under their hospital’s name instead of their practice, like I haven’t been seeing this doctor for seven years. They never send me the bill, and when I call to ask they say there is no bill, and then they say I had a bill and refused to pay it. This has happened twice. I am switching doctors because this one is impossible to pay, apparently.</p>
<p>I recently went to a specialist who made me pay for my entire appointment up front in cash because they said I had no coverage because my deductible hadn’t been met. I didn’t know, but I told them I found that strange since every other specialist I had ever been to just charged me my copay-- they said the copay didn’t apply because the deductible wasn’t met and were REALLY combative and mean about it, and I wasn’t arguing, I was just confused. Then I got an EOB, like five months later, showing the insurance paid them and-- lo and behold I should have only paid my copay! I called the insurance company and they told me the doctors office was dead wrong and purposefully trying to double bill me. They were really nice about it when I wrote them a strongly worded letter urging them to refund me the amount they double billed, but I will never set foot in that doctors office again after they treated me like an idiot when they were the ones doing their billing wrong.</p>
<p>I have a lot of medical issues and really probably should be going to more regular doctors appointments and I just can’t bear it.</p>