Hat Tip to the BBB

Forgive me if I have mentioned this before. With all that I’ve had happen over the last week, I honestly cannot recall if I blogged about this.

My wife and I received a bill from the place that my daughter has physical/occupational therapy. The bill was for $2100. My insurance is the primary and my wife’s insurance is secondary. With both of them, all that we should have to pay is a co-pay.

My wife called to find out why we owed so much. Their response was that the primary insurance was out of network. This didn’t make any sense because there was no issue when my son was doing the same therapy there. So they asked for all the insurance info again and said they would rebill. The bills kept coming and we kept calling them. Each time we gave them all the info and were told they would rebill.

I had enough and called them again, but first I called the insurance company. They assured me that they were NOT out of network. They also told me that only visit they had been billed for was in April. The bill lists visits all the way back to November!

The therapist gave me an email for their customer satisfaction department. So I whipped off an e-mail giving all of the information (again) and explaining that my insurance was primary and not out of network. A few days later I got an email back that said “Sorry, you still owe this money!” They again said that my insurance was out of network and that we had to contact the secondary insurance to get the coordination of benefits right.

I responded with a strongly worded e-mail that said that I didn’t accept their decision. I told them that they are billing wrong. I explained that my insurance said they are not out of network and had never received a claim from them for any visits until April. I told them that it was obvious that they never billed them. I went on to explain that I had seen numerous comments about their poor billing department on the internet (Google reviews and such). I told them that I would be reporting them to the Better Business Bureau.

I filed a claim with the BBB and received a message back that my complaint was accepted. The next steps were that they would contact the therapy place and they would see exactly what I had written to them. Once they did that, they would get with me to see if any action was taken. Well, surprise surprise….they called my wife this morning.

“This should have never gotten this far!” “I am so sorry that you were put in this situation” Blah Blah Blah. My wife said that the woman who called couldn’t have been nicer. Naturally. The woman explained that after the first call the issue should have been brought to her department. She went on to say that she can see where the error was made and would be working to correct the problem.

And now for the kicker. The woman had the guts to say, “Now that we are fixing the problem, we would really appreciate it if you could rescind your complaint with the Better Business Bureau.” Seriously?! My wife said that if this issue had been taken care of after the first one or two calls, we wouldn’t have had to file the complaint. “Well, this could affect the way our business looks to others.” Not our issue. “This will lower our rating or standing with them.” Again, not our issue.

My wife firmly told them that we had no intention of rescinding that complaint. She also stated that if the BBB hadn’t reached out to them on our behalf, they would still be asking for $2100. Basically, she told them that it is a shame that they are more concerned with the way they look rather than making sure their clients are taken care of.

They wound up calling back later in the afternoon to tell us of their “progress” and once again asked us to reconsider taking back our complaint. They were once again told “no.”

I have never filed a complaint before. I didn’t even know if I had done it correctly. I am grateful to them for stepping in for us. It is just a shame that it had to go that far. Hopefully, the next bill we receive from them will be for the co-pays only.