One of the most frustrating parts of the era of capitalism we currently live in (at least in the US, since I think that the specific combination of problems turning into this particular disastrous megazord of malpractice is unique to the country of my birth) is that there are lots of companies out there that will just lie to you or attempt to defraud you because most people won’t put up a fight. It’s the same pattern of behavior that scammers follow, except it’s insurance agencies or medical suppliers so people tend to trust them more readily which means they have a much higher rate of success than scammers do. It is insurance companies denying your claims after the fact or attempting to prevent coverage altogether. It is the dubious practice of sending summaries of charges that look exactly like bills but aren’t actually bills. It is companies giving you the “post insurance” price for something you’re ordering but then you getting hit for so much more because it turns out that insurance only covers that much once you’ve reached your yearly out-of-pocket maximum. Or, in the case that prompted this furious reflection, a company somehow signing you up for automatic resupply on some medical supplies you ordered without you being involved, shipping an entire order without notifying you, and then sending you bills that don’t actually list anything but the words “medical supplies” on several lines, each with their own inexplicably different price. I’ve cleared up the problem, supposedly, but it was a frustrating experience that ate up an evening and most of a morning to get it resolved and even then I’m not entirely sure that things have actually settled given that any trust I had in this company (which wasn’t much) is completely shot.

After the fact, based on what I was told and what I know to be true, I think I’ve figured out what happened. Well, I suspect it is one of two likely scenarios at this point. I placed an order for some supplies, what the company called a “standard resupply” for my particular medical device, back in March. During this process, due to some difficulties with payments processing, my Flex Spending Account card being on the verge of expiration (I had received but not yet activated my new FSA card), and some oddities with the bill for my previous resupply the year prior, I was not able to pay on the phone for the order I placed. They had to clear up the account from my previous order and let that sit for a time before I could pay for the new order, but they could start processing that new order. So, rather than have to deal with phone support again (a thirty-minute-minimum experience), I opted to set up auto-pay with my new FSA card. At that point, either the person mistakenly ALSO signed me up for automatic resupplies despite me saying that I did not want that when they asked OR they signed me up for it anyway and figured I wouldn’t notice until it was too late. Cut to three months later–two and a half months after I removed all payment methods attached to my account–in June, when I get and ignore a “you’ve got a bill due!” message because I’ve gotten one of those every month after I’ve made a purchase for three or four months, each for zero dollars. Then, this month, I start getting “bill past due” emails and decide to check it out since that’s not a thing I normally get as a part of these pointless zero-dollars-due bills I get.

Imagine my surprise when I see it claim I owe them a couple hundred dollars for an order of stuff I never placed, much less received. I started trying to dig into this, to figure out what was going on, but there’s no order history on my online account so I can’t see when this order was placed. I eventually figured out that I was sent stuff in May when I went back and actually checked all the voicemails I’d been getting from this company telling me to call them so I can order more supplies and one of them, the exact same length as all the others thanks to a bunch of silence stuck on the end of the call, notifying me that they were going to ship my order unless I called to cancel it. So, with nothing else to do and absolutely no package of supplies to speak of (it probably got left on the porch and disappeared at some point since I wasn’t aware I was being sent anything and didn’t know to look out for something), I called in, made my way through a few departments and at least thirty minutes of being on hold while people looked things up, and was told that my insurance had signed me up for automatic resupply and that my insurance covered eighty percent of the costs, two entirely separate ideas mentioned right next to each other but worded such that there was no expressed connection between the two (plus, I already knew from past experience that my deductable for these supplies is higher than these resupply orders ever cost so insurance wasn’t going to cover any part of them) despite the heavily implied connection. It took a bit of stern (but not aggressive) talking, but I was able to get both the billing department and shipping department to admit that my insurance can’t actually sign me up for this stuff without my involvement, that it was suspicious that I’d received no manifest, order notification, or even tracking information about this surprise order, and that I shouldn’t be forced to pay for what was clearly someone’s fuckup on their end.

All-in-all, things seem to have worked out. I have a bunch of reference numbers, names, and contemporaneous notes written down about the whole experience, so I’m prepared to call back and escalate if I get billed again, but I really hope it doesn’t come to that. I’d hate to torch my relationship with this company because it is literally the only one the combination of my insurance and the medical system providing the care associated with the device allows me to work with, but it’s not like insurance is covering this stuff anyway so I wouldn’t lose much if I had to go buy it all out of pocket somewhere else. I’d still be able to use my FSA card and I wouldn’t need to worry about getting signed up for automatic resupply again because someone wants to juice their numbers, so I might just take this option regardless. Though, not running it through my insurance would mean that it doesn’t contribute to my yearly out-of-pocket maximum and there’s actually a lot of value in hitting that number before the year is over.

It was just so frustrating! If I wasn’t aware of what my insurance company is allowed to do, if I didn’t have access to all of my records, if I wasn’t capable of arguing back against a call center employee who was just trying to do their job without lambasting them or turning it into a full-on conflict, I doubt I’d have succeed in getting my “account balance adjusted.” Which is probably what the company was counting on! They probably do this to tons of people and count on them just paying the bill or not knowing they don’t have to just accept whatever they’re billed for. I bet it works out pretty well for them most of them. Just not this once. Ugh. Even writing about it has left me feeling exhausted again. I’m so burned out and worn-down from work already that having to deal with this certainly didn’t help. Plus, now I have to stay wary for a few months to make sure everything went through and that I’m not going to get another “past due” bill in the mail halfway through next month or something. Regardless of what they do, they’re not getting paid by me if for no other reason than the principle of the thing. I refuse to be cowed by this shitty company and their shitty practices. I can and will fight until my last breath rather than reward this kind of shit.