this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

Yesterday I received a call from the collections department of one of our local hospitals in regards to a bill that I actually paid several weeks ago. It was a call that I half expected, given how things had previously gone with this bill.

When I first received it, I knew it wasn't correct. They were billing me for forty dollars more than they should have. I called and sure enough, the billing rep can see that I did indeed pay $40 upfront when I took my son to the nutritionist. She said she'd go ahead and make that correction and I'd get a revised bill in the mail.

I didn't get a new bill in the mail, instead I got the old, incorrect bill a month later. So, I call again, tell the billing rep that I already paid $40 of it, and I go ahead and make a payment over the phone. But that payment never gets processed. A few weeks later, I call again to make a payment. This time at least, the billing rep tells me that my balance is the correct amount! A few days later, I receive a receipt in the mail and all is well.

Except that is not, because as is evidenced from my previous experiences, the right hand of this company has clearly not yet met the left hand. I told the collections lady that I paid it several weeks ago and had a receipt to prove it. She did a bit of typing on the computer, and sure enough, I did pay it! I have a strange feeling this is not over.

On a similar note, last week's mail brought with it a lab bill. Suspicious simply because we have $0 copays for all lab tests. I can't make any sense of the bill, so I call the lab. The girl I talked to pretty much had no idea other than it looked like the insurance company had paid, but then taken back the payment. I call the insurance company. The man I talked to did a lot of digging and found some paperwork that wasn't filed correctly, which apparently resulted in them taking back the payment. He said he'd correct it.

So that's two bills in a fairly short amount of time that were incorrect. I wonder how many past bills have also been incorrect, yet still blindly paid by me. None, I hope.

What errors have you noticed on your bills?