Mercedes’ Neighborhood

I am a bad blogger, I haven't written anything for ages, mainly because I've been rather busy doing other things, like celebrating Christmas and the New Year. 

Grrrr! I just became "that person" to a customer service rep at an insurance company. I did however also apologize to her several times and explained I wasn't mad at her, but at the company and politely asked for her supervisor!

Our home owners insurance has our house insured for almost 3 times the amount is it worth. That also means they are charging us 3 times the amount of premium.

A little year ago I went on line after seeing the commercial telling me how much money they could save me I entered info for a free quote. I was amazed when the quote came back at almost half the cost of what I had been paying. So I switched insurance companies for both our car and our house.

After the quote became a policy I noticed something had been entered incorrect and the house was insured for 310,000.00! My husband and I laughed about that. We knew the value of the house was far from that and called the insurance company right away. I was told only an agent could change the info to get the policy corrected. About that same time some one called and set up an appointment for an inspector from the insurance company to look at our house and do an insurance inspection to confirm the accuracy of the quote.

I thought "Wow! They seem like a hands on insurance company. Great! I was afraid of going with a company that mainly deals over the internet and never having "real" person to deal with for big issues-but Ididn't want to have a pushy insurance agent keep trying to sell me other insurances.

A few changes were made to the policy and a new policy went into effect. Everything paid via the escrow account with our mortgage. I didn't get a bill or have to write a check, so I didn't give it  a second thought.

This year the renwal comes up and the bill is sent to the escrow acount and the amount is almost twice the amount it was last year. So I start reading the policy and notice all the mistakes that were made. Mistakes from the information the inspector turned in.

He had the age of the roof wrong by almost 12 years. That was a difference of $100. There were little charges for things like $12.00 because when he saw there was a computer he automaticaly had seperate coverage on it. Coverage that wasn't needed. The type of wood stove we had was listed wrong and was over charged by $200. Not to mention they had the square footage of our house listed at 2500sq ft. If you saw my tiny house you would see how absurp that was. Reality is it is 900 sq ft. That is almost a difference of another $500.00.

Again I called and told them about the errors on the policy. First person I spoke to was very freindly. Easily removed the items that didn't need to be insured and corrected the small errors. He was able to deduct almost $300.00 of the cost of the policy. I should get a check in a couple of weeks, but only an agent can do anything about the size of the house. I was transferred to an agent. Who tells me there is nothing that can be done to change the policy. After several minutes of arguing with him that there has to be somthing that can get the size of the house correct and explaining to him that some one will have a lot of explaining to do if the house burns down and they find only enough ash for a 900sq ft.

I was finaly told to call my county assesers office and get a "tax card" to send the insurance company, confirming the house is only 900sq ft.

I call the county. They tell me they don't have anything that shows the sqaure footage of your house. They can send proof of what they say the house/land is valued at.

I call the insurance company back and tell them this. Then I am told I can send a copy of the appraisal we had done two years ago when we refinanced.

So I make a copy I mail it in and I wait to see if they get it right.

I get a check for $250.00. I call to ask why it is $50 short of the amount I was told it was going to be by the first person who changed the policy. I was given some crap about a processing fee and being prorated to the date the error was corrected.

A little more then a week later I get a check in the mail from the insurance company. I think they finaly got it straightened out and they are paying me back. Except the check is for $937!

Another phone call.

I'm told it is a refund check because my mortgage company over paid the insurance company. When I question the mortgage company as to why they paid a bill that didn't need to be paid I was  told some one mistoke the policy change notifaction as a bill and I should just cash the check, then send the mortgage comapny extra money when I make my house payment and indicate that it is an esrow repayment.

At this point I'm just a bit pissed! Not only does this start to sound like some Nigerian internet scam (minus the Nigerian). But how much more can this insurance company screw up?

I'm probably starting to ramble a bit on this, but so far I have made several phone calls to the insurance comapany and even had to have the mortgage company put a hold on our escrow account so no more "mistaken" payments can get sent, since every time the insurance company makes the slightes change to our policy it generates the "policy change notifacation" to get sent to the mortgage company. That gets mistaken as a bill. That generates a payment from our escrow acount. That gets turned into a check from the insurance company and sent back to us. That then needs to get sent back to the mortgage company to re-pay the escrow!

It's so f*cked up it starting to look like I launder money for them!

The latest episode in this insurance nightmare is getting TWO policies in the mail on the same day. Both say they are effective Dec 12, 2009. One for a house valued at $300,000.00 with a premium of $937. The other for a house value of $145,000.00 with a premium of $550.00.

Finaly. They got the size of the house right, but what policy is the correct one that is the final one?

Another phone call.

I'm told it's all corrected now. As of Dec 12, 2009. Almost a year and a half after the first call to get this corrected. They have the right size of our house.

I'm told the check for $279 was sent dec 28th.

WTF?????

I'm may not be the brightest bulb in the light fixture at times but even I know 937 - 550 = 387!

$387.00 and should be the check I should be getting sent!

Now I get put on hold for an eternity. I finaly get a supervisor who looks over the account and varifies everything I had been telling them!.......But she put all the info into her computer and it confirms the refund check is for $279 and cheerfully tells me I should get it next week!

That's when I became "that" customer.

I asked her if she new simple math. The kind you use a pen and paer to figure it out. Write down 937 subtract 550.....what do you get? After a pause...387?

So explain how the check is only $279.

Now I'm told an IT tech has to look at the account to see why "the system" is doing the math wrong!

I'm starting to think my insurance company found it's own bail out system.
Conviently over charge then take an eternity to fix it. All the time you have a merry go round of checks, keeping the consumer thinking refunds and problems are being fixed.

Except each time the insurance company has figured out a way to keep just a bit of that refund money.

I wonder how many other people they are screwing over that don't even realize it.!

End of Another Year!

Apparently the flag counter below should provide flags for individual States in the U.S. So before I bugger about with changing my code, I thought I'd test it here as a post.

On the wave of the Copenhagen failure, because when you really look at what has been achieved you will realise that not an iota of forwardness has been reached, I thought I might share my feelings over climate change.

I had a slight grin and a little twinkle in my eye when I read this story a moment ago. 

Mary & Joseph

My Christmas spirit is crashing fast. At this point I can't wait for the end of January...

Customer Service for a mail order company at Christmas sucks! ......The little voice is getting harder and harder to keep under control. If I don't let it speak here, It might get loose and cost me my job.

I am sick of getting yelled at!  Below are examples of the calls I take and how I wish I could deal with them.

I have been yelled at because we ran out of ______. Fill in the blank with any item that was promised to little Janey or Johnny for their gift..........What the hell were you thinking waiting 2 weeks before Christmas before calling to order, and how about letting Jr get a dose of reality....you don't always get what you want!

I have been told at least once a day that I am ruining some kids Christmas,because I won't let the dead beat place an order on an account that is already 6 months past due........You should have worn a rubber....we wouldn't be having this conversation.

For every idiot that complained about having to be on hold forever just to pay their damn bill........Go to hell!
You could have mailed it, you could have pushed a few buttons on your phone and had it done already yourself, but you decided to just stand there and listen to our festive holiday music instead of having your check/debit card ready!

 To all the customers that call to complain about an issue that happened this past summer....Seriously? You waited this long to call and complain, couldn't you wait another month and not call at our busiest time of the year?

Customers that order/call on their lunch break......If I want to listen to cows, I will visit the farm. Please refrain from eating during our call.

Management.......If you send me one more email telling me how far ahead projected sales are one more time......well, the little voice just might tell you were to go.......

Company keeps making more money, but I'm paid the same wage I was paid to do this crap last year.....When raise time comes around, it better be a good one. A big enough one to make me forget how much this jobs sucks this time of year.

To all the customers that are yet to call. Give me a break. I didn't loose your package, I didn't screw up your order. I didn't cause the problem........all I did was answer the phone.

Merry F***ing Christmas!

Well, I've had the old banner for seven years, its been part of my blog for such a long time I can't even think what the place would look like if I changed it. So being the rather adventurous individual that I am who likes to live life on the edge, I decided it's finally time for a change.

Ever since our local supermarket changed hands from Somerfields to Morrisons, I've been reaping the benefits of a better run store.  I used to work for Somerfields way back when so I understood why it was such a useless retailer. Luckily they went out of business and my favourite food shop of all took over.

496x279_festive_V3

I like many others have downloaded the brand spanking new Google Chrome for Mac beta that has just been released. I'm not unhappy with Safari, I find it very adequate for surfing the net although I would like to add a few useful third party plug-ins like you can in Firefox. I hear a lot of you ask, 'why don't you just use Firefox then?' I say it's not that good and the overall user experience is shoddy on a Mac as the whole program smells of PC to me.