Be Nice = Get Nice

I received a phone call from a collection agency saying I owed $700+ on my health insurance from back in 2016. Sure that it was a mistake, I told the gentleman (I use the term only out of politeness) that it was a mistake and that I have never missed a premium payment.

I am sure he is used to dealing with deadbeats (I use the term only out of rudeness) all day and that he gets a ton of excuses and very little in the way of payment. He proceeded to cop a major attitude with me, “You owe the money. I don’t want excuses. I just need to know how you intend to pay your debt.”

As you can guess, I was caught off-guard by his tone and said (politely,) “I’m sorry. You have bad information. I will not be paying you anything. I will call the insurance company and straighten it out.”

Expecting him to just hang up or at least harrumph, he instead said, “They did a bunch of audits and discovered underpayments so you owe the money. Would you like to pay with…”

“Whoa there,” I said. “Now you sound like a scammer.  Does this actually work? Browbeating people into giving you payments just to stop the harassment?” 

I repeated, “I will call the insurance company. Good bye.”

Well, I called the insurance company and got a very pleasant lady and told her that I was called by collections saying I owed a back amount. I told her that I know all the payments had been made.

She got my info, looked it up and said, “Yes, it does appear you owe $700+ dollar. Let me look into the detail.”

She did her research and discovered that it was a misappropriation of payments and credits and that not only did I not owe anything, but I was due back about $300. She put in a request to expedite the issue and told me I would have it in 3-5 business days.

She asked if she could help me with anything else and I responded, “Wait… before you go.  Let me just say you absolutely rock!“

She got a big giggle out of that and we both hung up quite happy.

by Chris Doelle