Survey Says

Korean Twist lunch. Yes, that is supposed to be a single serving burrito. I only ate half.

I am way behind on my stories but I don’t think anyone wants to read a 2000 word post so I’ll just tell the banking story. And a quick Hannah story.

For at least a month, maybe longer, after I sought help for my neck pain issues I got incomprehensible statements from the clinic and my insurance. The clinic statements say stuff like: ex; prohs, escp, 2 units, prox. et.

Next to each item there are random dollar amounts that were never consistent on any bill.

Then my insurance sends me a statement that says: services billed $371. Our rate: $117.50. Percentage not covered 35.75. You owe: $17.63.

Every time I got a bill I took out all the medical statements and all the insurance reports and I could never figure it out and just paid them all.

Then I got a refund check from the doctor which crossed in the mail with another payment I made from a statement they sent.

Oh, I use billpay. That’s the key part of the story.

After that final payment they returned the billpay check marked VOID to me with a letter telling me they didn’t know why I kept paying since I didn’t owe anything.

Dryer vents on an apartment building in NE Portland.

I took the check to the bank and asked if there was anything I needed to do.

First they told me it wasn’t from their bank and did I have any other bank accounts?

I carefully kept my head from imploding and said I didn’t do billpay with any other banks, it was their check and that’s why I was there.

They said that normally I would just deposit it but since it said VOID there was nothing they could do and I should call the phone number on the check and ask them what to do.

I don’t feel like I can make the whole exchange interesting but understand that it went on a lot longer and the bank people never said anything that made sense. That can’t be the first billpay in history that wasn’t cashed by the recipient. It says right on the check that it’s void after 90 days. I’m guessing in 90 days the money is going to be back in my account but the girl in the bank didn’t seem hopeful. At the conclusion of this, she wanted to know, “Does that help?”

No, why would she even ask that? She wasn’t even a tiny bit helpful.

It’s a small amount that’s already wasted way too much of my time so I’m not going to worry about it.

On Thursday night we got a survey call to quiz me about my recent visit to this branch. Bob was trying to screen the call and I grabbed the receiver out of his hand.

YES! I said, I want to do the customer service survey.

And you’ve heard me moan and groan about this before but customer service questions aren’t designed to let you give feedback on a problem. The questions were like: 5 you agree, 1 you don’t agree, did the teller try to be helpful?

Yes, she was nice and intended to solve my problem but the service she provided was completely worthless. Why wasn’t there a question about that?

And also: is that were we are now? We rate people on the basis of how much they tried?

If the Doctor says he tried to remove your appendix but only managed to take out a wedge of your spleen, are we supposed to say: Yay, you tried. At least you removed something.

Urgh.

And speaking of lame service Hannah came to hang out with us this weekend. Yay.

Amtrak phoned a couple hours before she was supposed to leave to inform her that there was a mudslide on the tracks and no trains were getting through.
Hannah said: Okay. I need to get home. What are my options?
Amtrak said: Maybe we’ll get people through tomorrow.
Hannah said: I have to work tomorrow. I have to get home.
Hand poorly placed over receiver, Amtrak to co-worker: She says she has to get to Seattle.
Amtrak: You could try Greyhound.
Hannah: You don’t have any options?
Amtrak: We’d reimburse your ticket.
Hannah: You’re telling me I have no way to get home tonight. Amtrak isn’t organizing a bus?
Long pause.
Amtrak: Uh, well. We have a bus coming in from California. You might be able to get on it.

We went down there and there was a nice bus and they were loading everyone on it. I wonder if she’ll get a customer service survey.