Is it impossible to deal with real people any more? | Steve Israel

Stuff sure seems complicated these days, doesn’t it?

Especially everyday stuff you need to live, like money and medical matters.

Picking up your phone and getting a real person and a straight answer without pressing countless numbers and waiting precious minutes seems as rare as getting a real handwritten letter from a real human.

The culprit all too often is the thing that was supposed to make life simpler: the computer, or more specifically, our dependence on the computer.

For example:

For the last three years, my wife has been getting medical supplies to monitor her glucose for her Type 1 diabetes from the same company. For the last three years, those supplies have been paid for by Medicare and her secondary insurance. The only time we ever pay out of pocket is to cover the Medicare deductible.

Yet for years, we’ve been getting invoices that say, “Due from patient $46.92” — well after the deductible has been met.

The first time we got that bill, we paid it because I’m a stickler for paying bills on time.

We discovered we shouldn’t have paid it when we received the next bill with a credit for — you guessed it — $46.92. After several phone calls — which meant waiting countless minutes for a real person — we learned the “due from patient” bill was actually the portion due from our secondary insurance, which would ALWAYS pay it.

When I pointed out that the mistake — and extra work and paperwork for the company — could have been avoided by not sending any bills until the secondary insurance was paid, the nice person acknowledged that lots of people had the same complaint. But, she said, she and her fellow customer service workers were powerless to do anything about it because of “the computer.” When I suggested that “the computer” program should be changed, she agreed and told me to ignore future bills for $46.92.

Of course, I kept getting bills for $46.92, which I ignored.

So I was shocked when we recently got an out-of-the-blue phone call from a real person (!!!) from the company, who said we owed $125.20 — especially because we hadn’t even received a bill for that amount. The nice person explained that $125.20 was part of that $226 Medicare deductible that hadn’t been reached when some supplies had been sent — a fact that was confirmed when I called Medicare, which was its own time-consuming ordeal. But when we received the bill that I requested, I was shocked again because it said, “Due from patient $151.16.”

Turns out the extra money was what the secondary insurance will pay, which was why I ignored it and sent a check for that $125.20 to the medical supply company — and told the billing person via email and voice mail. Three days later, we got two more bills for that mistaken $151.16. After more time-eating phone calls, I learned those bills were sent because my check hadn’t been processed. The cause of these latest time-wasting, stress-causing mistakes?

Of course, you know what the nice person at the company said when I called for explanation: “the computer.”

As for why real people can’t reprogram that computer?

All I got was a “we’re working on it.”

So why don’t we switch medical supply companies? We’ve already tried two other companies — and endured even more complicated hassles, like mysterious charges that took hours to deal with and worse, a temporary lack of supplies — both problems caused by computer-generated issues.

Don’t the folks in charge of these computerized, automated systems ever have to deal with similar, complicated, time-wasting stuff in their personal lives — and realize they could do better at their own companies?

Wouldn’t it be better — for us consumers, and for the company and its reputation — if the folks in charge listened to their customers and customer service people and changed the inflexible systems that cause us so many problems and leave its workers and us feeling powerless?

Just imagine that instead of picking up the phone, pressing countless buttons, being put on hold for countless minutes and feeling fed up because of “the computer” system, this happened: You dialed the number and immediately reached a real person who actually solved your problem.

Not only would we receive better customer service and have a more positive opinion of the company, the company would have a better reputation, which could earn it more customers and more profits.

But that would make too much sense, wouldn’t it?

Steve Israel, a longtime editor and columnist at the Times Herald-Record in Orange County, New York, can be reached at steveisrael53@outlook.com.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Computers are too inflexible