So Hard To Make A Payment
I’ve never thought it will be this hard to make a payment and close an account. Yet here we are in December of 2021 and apparently making a payment is way too complicated…
For more context on this, read the recap of my call with The CEO. That still doesn’t give the full history, but should set the tone about how messed things up right now.
So prior to Thanksgiving, finally the agent at this <THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY> confirmed that they have the adjusted balance. I said great, we agreed to make a payment and close this chapter. She paused the voice recording while she took my payment details, resumed recording, we wished “Happy Thanksgiving” to each other and I was looking for a payment confirmation email in 7-14 business days. Which was weird, but in this process there were so many weird things, this one was fitting the pattern.
Case closed, right? Wroooooooong!
After Thanksgiving still no payment confirmation, so I call back. Only to be told by another agent that my balance is overdue. That is when I blew a fuse. Asked to speak to someone who can actually help me resolve this situation. I have been running in circles for months by now, meeting with this same incompetency and same “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does” kind of situation.
Why does this bother me so much? Beside the fact that our invoice and name incorrectly is still sitting with a collection agency that nobody from the hostpital or from this <THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY> contacted pulling it back. Despite they were so quick sending it to collections by an error…
Another reason why I was so upset was that in December of 2021 I was told that the payment for which I provided my payment information before Thanksgiving was not processed for an unknown reason and likely will not be processed at all, so I am better off making a new payment. Which means providing my payment information over the phone again. Why is it so suprising? No online payment option, I can pay over the phone or mailing a check. But here comes the fun part. Here is the actualy payment process that the agent told me they have to follow:
- Payment details are recorded over the phone by
<THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY>representative - Payment details are forwarded to
<NAME_OF_SPECIFIC_PERSON>(who is a<THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY>employee) - Payment details are faxed over to
<HOSPITAL>for processing - Payment details are used for manual processing of payment by an employee on the
<HOSPITAL>side - Payment confirmation is provided by
<HOSPITAL>to<THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY> - Payment confirmation is provided by
<THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY>to me
If this is not an outline of a clusterfuck of a process, then I don’t know what is…
Especially everyone is so concerned about privacy and whatever other word they throw in as a roadblock for me, yet they just manually write down and fax around payment informations and cannot even give a reason when it is not used to process a payment.
And the bonus? That joke of a CEO at the <HOSPITAL> and his team when they claim they are not responsible for this <THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY> despite they hired them, it turns out, the actual payment is always processed by someone at the <HOSPITAL>. How messed up is this?
Hard to stay calm in the face of such incompetency. I should be more specific: careless incompetency. Yet when I ask for a three-way call between the <HOSPITAL>, the <THIRD_PARTY_BILLING_COMPANY> and me or even adding the collection agency (which should not even be in the picture at all) as a fourth party, they tell me it is not possible. Of course it is not possible if you don’t want to solve the problem. Of course it is not possible when you are not the one going in circles…