So about a month ago I got a 3 page letter from an insurance company which stated upon extensive analysis and review of claims records they had determined that they had overpaid me $0.22 (yes 22 cents). Aside from the fact that they made me read three pages of nonsense to find out I owed them 22 cents I thought it a bit odd that they spent 49 cents to mail me a letter to tell me I owed them 22 cents and then wanted me to spend 49 cents and even more of my time to send them a check for 22 cents. So I ignored the letter assuming they would realize the stupidity of this. Then again we are dealing with an insurance company here so what are the odds of that happening.
Well believe it or not, today I got a “second notice” warning me that I still had not paid up. That’s 98 cents plus manpower and materials to collect 22 cents (Your premium dollars at work). I have no doubt the next letter will contain some threats and strong arm tactics. I could have ignored the letter again but I like to have a bit of fun so I reached in my pocket and pulled out a quarter. I taped it to the letter after which I scrawled a quick note on the bottom stating that this was the smallest change I had and by the way would they please send me a check for the 3 cents they now owed me.
I’ll probably never see that 3 cents again but I would love to see the face of the person who opens the letter.
So about a month ago I got a 3 page letter from an insurance company which stated upon extensive analysis and review of claims records they had determined that they had overpaid me $0.22 (yes 22 cents). Aside from the fact that they made me read three pages of nonsense to find out I owed them 22 cents I thought it a bit odd that they spent 49 cents to mail me a letter to tell me I owed them 22 cents and then wanted me to spend 49 cents and even more of my time to send them a check for 22 cents. So I ignored the letter assuming they would realize the stupidity of this. Then again we are dealing with an insurance company here so what are the odds of that happening. Well believe it or not, today I got a "second notice" warning me that I still had not paid up. That's 98 cents plus manpower and materials to collect 22 cents (Your premium dollars at work). I have no doubt the next letter will contain some threats and strong arm tactics. I could have ignored the letter again but I like to have a bit of fun so I reached in my pocket and pulled out a quarter. I taped it to the letter after which I scrawled a quick note on the bottom stating that this was the smallest change I had and by the way would they please send me a check for the 3 cents they now owed me. I'll probably never see that 3 cents again but I would love to see the face of the person who opens the letter.That sort of thing happens, usually because the bills are sent out by computer. A couple of years ago I kept being billed by a doctor's office for six cents. I finally did pretty much what you did, but I didn't overpay. I taped six pennies to a sheet of paper and mailed it to them. I had a good secret laugh thinking they wouldn't know what to do with cash and that it might send them into a tailspin. I never found out but the billings stopped. If your office bills by computer, you should check to see if this ever happens in your system. Computers aren't usualy programmed to decide if the billing is less than the postage. They just keep billing whatever hasn't been collected, no matter what the reason. I agree that three-page letter is overkill. Lois
Lois this is actually a very easy thing to prevent especially if you bill by computer. Our system has a setting that we can change. We set the lower limit for billing patients, currently $5. Anything less than that amount and no bill goes out. We just collect the next time the patient comes in. A huge insurance company should be able to do at least as well as us since they have giant IT departments.
My reaction to this was borne not just out of the silliness of it but the fact that insurance companies have zero respect for my time or my staff’s time and are constantly doing things like this. Yesterday I spent 20 minutes on the phone with an insurance company trying to get approval for a prescription for Tamiflu for an 80 year old patient who was very sick with the flu. This medicine has to be started within the first 48 hours or its of no use and an 80 year old with the flu can get sick very fast. This drug is the standard of care for the flu so there should be no reason for me to have to get authorization since its never going to be denied. The insurance company doesn’t care though. They waste our time in the hopes that we will give up and they will get out of paying for something. It costs them very little because they hire minimum wage workers to man the phones on their end while a physician has to battle for the patient on our end in order to get thing approved.
This was just a way to have a laugh and take out some frustration on them. I’m thinking of taking them to small claims court if they don’t send me my 3 cents back 
Lois this is actually a very easy thing to prevent especially if you bill by computer. Our system has a setting that we can change. We set the lower limit for billing patients, currently $5. Anything less than that amount and no bill goes out. We just collect the next time the patient comes in. A huge insurance company should be able to do at least as well as us since they have giant IT departments. My reaction to this was borne not just out of the silliness of it but the fact that insurance companies have zero respect for my time or my staff's time and are constantly doing things like this. Yesterday I spent 20 minutes on the phone with an insurance company trying to get approval for a prescription for Tamiflu for an 80 year old patient who was very sick with the flu. This medicine has to be started within the first 48 hours or its of no use and an 80 year old with the flu can get sick very fast. This drug is the standard of care for the flu so there should be no reason for me to have to get authorization since its never going to be denied. The insurance company doesn't care though. They waste our time in the hopes that we will give up and they will get out of paying for something. It costs them very little because they hire minimum wage workers to man the phones on their end while a physician has to battle for the patient on our end in order to get thing approved. This was just a way to have a laugh and take out some frustration on them. I'm thinking of taking them to small claims court if they don't send me my 3 cents back ;-)Good idea! i actually understand your frustration better than most, having been a writer and editor for insurance publications for a large part of my career. I never ran out of things to write about. If an error occurs it is magnified in large corporations. Unfortunately, no one seems to be in charge of such errors. Insurance companies could certainly do a better job than they are doing. It has to be even more frustrating for doctors than patients. I have often said that insurance companies--especially health insurance companies--are crying out by their own actions or inaction for more governmemt regulation and control, no matter how much they resist it and denigrate it. They have a responsibility to the people they insure but they shirk that responsibility. It's time for a big change in the way the insurance industry operates. Andrew Tobias in the 1980s wrote a book called The invisible Bankers, a perfect definition of how insurance companies operate in this country. It shows that they are, in reality, unregulated bankers whose irresponsibile profiteering is seldom checked, even as banks are. You can read about the book here. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Bankers Lois
You will probably, eventually, get a check for 3 cents, which will cost them, again, more than the 22 cents that was owed.
Whatever it costs them, I suspect they will still, majorly, profit off of you, by charging more than what is fair, in the first place.
The stupidity just keeps going. I got the check for $0.03 today. How funny is that. I’m going to frame it instead of cashing it
It’s hard to believe you got the .03 check. Someone had to manually handle that quarter. I can imagine they thought about getting special permission and sitting through a couple meetings to be able to get 5 people to sign a form saying they could write it off, but decided it would be more fun to handle it as if that .03 really mattered. Maybe they are getting a small amount of joy seeing it appear on reports as an outstanding check and watching people discuss it endlessly instead of just deleting it.
When I left college, I paid my bills and left forwarding addresses. The phone company wrote me and said I owed them a similar amount to 22 cents. I did nothing. I got 4 or 5 more notices, then they stopped.
The stupidity just keeps going. I got the check for $0.03 today. How funny is that. I'm going to frame it instead of cashing itSomeone in accounts payable is going to swear about you.
The stupidity just keeps going. I got the check for $0.03 today. How funny is that. I'm going to frame it instead of cashing itSomeone in accounts payable is going to swear about you. Either that or they are having a good laugh along with me
A friend of mine had the hobby of getting refund checks for less than what it cost to mail them out. He had dozens of them from different companies that he’d collected over the years.
Any accountants here? I wonder if holding onto these tiny checks, or any from them for that matter, costs them in any way? So say they send out one million in these types of checks, and everyone holds onto them until like 3 days before they expire. That’s a million bucks that they can’t invest, or whatever.
I swear this is true. I got this email this morning
John, Can you look at the code in SWF and see if you see a check on the 50 cent limit. I’m wondering if we could remove this restriction on the manual check process?So, someone a decade ago, a different manager of the accounting department as well as all different staff in IT decided 50 cents was the least we would ever write a check for. Now someone sees the message ""Amount must be at least $.50", - Required Field" and not knowing what else to do, passes it on through three managers to me. And, yes, I work in government. We've already spent at least $10 bucks of labor on this.
I swear this is true. I got this email this morningI'm guessing in both your case and mine no one cares and no one wanted to take ownership so the problem never gets addressed. It's truly dumbfounding though that someone in your case looked at the problem and still thought it was reasonable to chase people down for 50 cents. The stamp alone costs 49 cents not to mention the envelope and labor involved in processing it on both end. Penny wise and dollar foolish my first boss always use to say about stuff like this.John, Can you look at the code in SWF and see if you see a check on the 50 cent limit. I’m wondering if we could remove this restriction on the manual check process?So, someone a decade ago, a different manager of the accounting department as well as all different staff in IT decided 50 cents was the least we would ever write a check for. Now someone sees the message ""Amount must be at least $.50", - Required Field" and not knowing what else to do, passes it on through three managers to me. And, yes, I work in government. We've already spent at least $10 bucks of labor on this.