“That Stupid Woman”

Let me begin by saying I am huge on customer service…if your company provides great service I will tell everyone I know and likewise if I get bad service everyone will also hear about that!  Well…the woman I spoke to on Sunday will forever be known as “That Stupid Woman” at least until someone else deserves the title more (the last person to hold that title worked at Time Warner).  ***Note to anyone working the call center at an insurance company: If a pregnant woman calls with questions about her coverage…don’t be stupid…don’t give her a hard time…and don’t yell at her! 
Something else we have to do to prepare for childbirth is get a letter from our insurance company saying that they will pay for labor and delivery etc…  If we don’t get the letter then we need to pay the entire balance ourselves before we leave the hospital.  I made sure we have enough money to take care of the bill just in case but it scares me to think that we may be out that much money until we get reimbursed (a couple months?).  The letter takes a couple days to process so I called the morning after I was up half the night with Braxton Hicks Contractions.  I asked the woman if she could go ahead and process the letter, she said it had to be done online…fine…so I asked the details of the letter.  She said that the letter would be good for one day and if I didn’t have the baby on that day the letter would be voided…WAIT WHAT?!?  I told her that I wasn’t having a scheduled c-section or induction and I didn’t know what date the baby would be born.  She said just to use the due date and since my due date is still 3 weeks away my letter wouldn’t be considered priority and could take longer.  I lied a little and said that my doctor thought I would go into labor in the next week.  She asked what day I would be going into labor…I answered with whatever day the baby decides to come.  I decided to let it go before it upset me more and I asked what happened when I went into labor on a day that was different than the date on the letter.  She said we could call and have an amendment done…”let me get this straight, while I am in labor I have to call the insurance company and expect them to send another letter (which takes a few days)”.  She raised her voice and said “MAM THIS IS STANDARD PROCEDURE FOR SCHEDULED MEDICAL PROCEDURES”…I reminded her that my baby’s birth date wasn’t scheduled and that I am sorry if my questions were out of line but I have never done this before.  I felt the tears and my stress level rising, so I thanked her and hung up.

Of the website wasn’t working so I made Adam call back (I am usually the phone person because I usually have a million more questions than Adam).  He talked to a nice woman who said she could process the letter on the phone.  Adam asked again about the date on the letter and this woman said “oh don’t worry about that it’s good for 30 days from the day I send it out…and I just sent it now so if it gets close to 30 days just call and get another one.” 

Honestly these days I have been more emotional and anything can set me off…but this woman was ridiculous.  I know I have never given birth before but isn’t it common knowledge that the baby doesn’t always come on the due date…by the way I looked up the statistics and 2% of babies are born on the due date. 
So it’s a great thing that the website didn’t work or “that stupid woman” would have given me something else to stress over before I go into labor and give me one more thing to think about as I try to get to the hospital while my husband could quite possibly be in a different country.