Persistent Sucker

February 18 2014,

Right after Christmas, I received a surprise gift in the mail, it was a bill. I looked at it carefully I noticed that they had charged me $6.00 a day for "9 TV", which meant 9 days of television while I was in the hospital.

So I went into attack mode and attacked. Here are my call logs.

Called on 01.02.2014 at 3:13 PM
Called on 01.09.0214 at 9:45 AM
Called on 01.17.2014 at 9:33 AM
Called on 01.24.2014 at 9:31 AM
Called on 01.30.2014 at 10:44 AM
Called on 02.06.2014 at 3:09 PM
Called on 02.10.2014 at 8:07 AM
Called on 02.18.2014 at 12:12 PM

When I called them, it was the same story, which goes something like this. You have to pay. And I would say, no I don't, yes you do, no I don't.

Their defense was that there were tent cards and information signs on the walls and on the television that said that if I did not want to use the television, I needed to call maintenance and turn off the service. No where in the two rooms I was in were there signs or information booklets, tent cards, or anything that said this. I kept on telling them to prove it, to show me pictures of where the tent cards and information signs were in the rooms I was staying at.

At one point I got so p/o'd and I said something along the lines of, "I was half dead after surgery, how the hell am I suppose to know to turn off the service?" That method did not work. They weren't compassionate nor caring. They just wanted their money.

Finally I got a hint from one of the representative who said that I had to call the hospital and talk to the "hospital patient and guest relations department". There was no such department according to the hospital. I then tried the billing department. Someone in the billing department was familiar with this issue and pushed me off to the facilities department. I remembered being sent to the facilities department on the January 2nd phone call, but I had talked to a maintenance guy who understood and was familiar with my situation but didn't know how to help. Finally I got a lady who actually knew what to do.

She sent an email to the supervisor or manager of the billing company. Finally after 3 more phone calls, the supervisor Jim finally got off his ass and adjusted the bill. I did not have to pay this $54.00 fee. For goodness sake, the television was a 14" CRT television with limited channels, I literally had to squint to see it.

My lesson learnt from this is to call facilities and have the television service turned off the next time I am in the hospital, I hear that this is common practice. The other lesson is to not give up. At the very beginning, I was just going to pay it, but then I took it on as a challenge. $54.00 can get me 6 yards of fabric!

... and yes, it's snowing again.

Quilt & Bitch