Why you little…!

Why you little…!

Insurance companies. Dental insurance companies.

I received a letter through the pouch from my dental insurance company telling me that I hadn’t filled out the following information:
-Name of dentist
-Address of dentist’s office
-Phone number of dentist
-Tax ID number of dentist

Fuming, I call the 800 number (which, as it turns out, is not free at all if called from outside the United States), compose myself while I navigated through all the touch tone menus and announce to the lady that said “Hi my name is XX, how can I help you?”:

Me: “Hi XX, I’m calling from the Congo”. Dramatic pause. “I would like to verify my latest dental claim please”
Xx: “OK, please wait for me to pull it out from our system”. On hold with eye-scratchingly annoying music. “oh here it is, yes?”
Me: “Well, it seems that I received a letter asking me to fill in some additional information for my dentist”
Xx: “Yes”
Me: “Well, my dentist’s name is on line 3, her address on line 5, her phone number is beside the line 8, and well, she doesn’t have an tax ID number because she lives and works in Senegal”
Xx: “Oh she doesn’t have a tax ID number? What’s her name?”
Me (baffled): “…”
XX: “…”
Me: “her name is YY, it’s on line 3”
Xx: “Oh, I see, YY. It looks like you have all the necessary information on your form, I will reprocess your claim”
Me (sweetly with an edge of tense): “Thank you ma’am”

Why you little…! What’s up with insurance companies? Are they just intent on making it very very hard to obtain the money for services that you pay for each month? Do they hold special training sessions on how to slow down claims (lesson one: stall claims coming from overseas! There is less of a chance that the said individual will want to spend her hard-earned cash on long distance to deal with the situation!)

Sigh. Zen, I need to remain zen.

***Thanks Kissa Kyssa and Eric for Posting on my map!***