My friend Carolyn passed away at the beginning of April and I'm still mopping up various leftovers from her life. One of these has been a steady stream of bills for $27.08 from a company that supplies medical equipment. A new one is sent every week to her old address, which forwards for the time being to my address, and they're getting nastier and nastier. Donald Trump has less threatening words for the Taliban than this company has for my late girl friend.
In the last months of her life, she was in an Assisted Living Facility. A Hospice Doctor ordered 24/7 oxygen for her and somehow — don't ask me how or why — two different companies delivered oxygen supplies. One set, from what we'll call Company B, worked fine and when we had questions or problems, all we had to do was call Company B and someone would answer immediately and make things right. The other set, from what we'll call Company A, didn't work…or maybe it did but it came without instructions and neither I nor anyone at the Assisted Care facility could figure out how to make it work.
We called their support line a few times and invariably got placed on hold for…well, I don't know how long. It was long enough to cause us to surrender and hang up. That's how long it was. Then I tried calling their delivery department and telling them to come get their machine and tanks. Each time, someone said, "We'll send someone out" and each time, no one came.
Company A's oxygen equipment sat in the corner for several weeks, unused. The day after Carolyn left, I called Company A, told them the patient had died and that revelation caused them to send someone over to pick up supplies. No one however told their Billing Department that the patient had died. She's been getting weekly bills which are now escalating into threats of collection agencies, interest payments, fines and other unspecified nastiness…all to collect twenty-eight bucks from a woman who died in April.
I probably should have just let it go but I get curious as to why certain people and companies do things that make so little sense to me. I mean, has it never occurred to anyone there that if you deliver oxygen equipment to a Nursing Home — equipment which was ordered by a Hospice Doctor — and then bills go unanswered for four months, maybe — just maybe — the person who was in hospice care is not around to pay that bill?
I tried writing "deceased" on bills and sending them back. This did nothing.
A few times, I tried phoning their billing department and until this morning, the shortest wait time estimate the computer lady gave me was "Your call will be answered in approximately twenty-six minutes." This is the number you call if you have a question about the bill before you pay it, and I can't see how that could possibly be cost-effective for them. I mean, shouldn't you make it easy for the folks with questions to find out what they need to know before they pay?
This morning when the latest threatening letter arrived, I decided to write this article but first, I called up to see what the wait time would be. Amazingly, the computer lady said I'd have to hold for three minutes so I decided okay, fine. It turned out to be more like seven, proving that you just can't trust computer ladies. This one sounded a lot like Kellyanne Conway so I suppose I should have been wary.
The non-computer lady who finally came on the line sounded nice enough and when I told her my lady friend had died, she said, 'I'm sorry for your loss," with a delivery that suggested this is said often in her building with the about the same frequency they also say, "You have a nice day." She then insisted that I stay on the line until she had filled out some sort of computer screen form and gotten it approved. I said, "Can't I go now? I'm doing your company a favor by calling at all and I've told you everything you need to know. I've been on this call for fifteen minutes."
She said, "If you end this call before the cancellation of the bill is approved, it wipes out everything and the bills will keep on coming. And you've only been on with me for eight minutes."
I probably should have just hung up and let them keep sending threats because, after all, what can they do? But I gave her a few more minutes and finally, she said, "All right. The cancellation of the bill has been approved."
I asked, "Can I go now?" She said yes but added, "You may continue to receive the bills for a month or two but eventually, they will stop." I have this strange feeling that they won't.