Community Chat

[qualitygal]

Now that's an egghead who can't fix that!!!  What a waste, no wonder ....you know.

[AuntG]

I incorrectly read the post's title and thought it was going to be about someone the poster ate with who didn't want to split the bill because hers cost two cents less. After reading  what actually happened, I'd say my scenario was saner than what fidelity is doing. 

[Spurt]

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@gardenman wrote:

I was billed by a major hospital for several months for a penny. I thought it was silly. (My total medical expenses at the facility since 1979 were for over a million dollars.) Around the third month, they called and offered to set up a payment plan for the unpaid amount where I could make monthly installments. I said, "Great! Let's do that!" (They obviously didn't have my account pulled up.)

When she pulled my account up, she gasped, "A penny? We're billing you for a penny?" I explained that I had no issue paying it, but it just didn't make sense to write a check and use a stamp to pay a penny. I'd just tack the penny onto another bill and another bill would be coming soon as I had another procedure planned. She agreed. I thought they were done, but no. The next month another bill came asking for the penny and threatening to start charging me interest and reporting me to the credit bureaus if I didn't pay it.  I got a postcard from the post office, taped a penny to it, and sent it to them. They sent me a receipt back along with a letter recommending not sending cash through the mail as it could be easily stolen. 

They spent several dollars in postage to retrieve a penny. It made no sense to me, but they did what they did. It also made no sense to the people I talked with there, but they did it anyway. 

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@gardenman 

We had a similar situation happen with the company I work for and when we were audited they told us we had to collect otherwise the company would be fined....and our CEO talked about it in a meeting and how some of the bureaucrats just have no common sense whatsoever......And how much it cost our company to comply.....SMH

[Porcelain]

And five years from now you'll receive a scary lawyer letter demanding you pay back the ill-gotten 40 cents.

[gardenman]

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@Spurt wrote:

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@gardenman wrote:

I was billed by a major hospital for several months for a penny. I thought it was silly. (My total medical expenses at the facility since 1979 were for over a million dollars.) Around the third month, they called and offered to set up a payment plan for the unpaid amount where I could make monthly installments. I said, "Great! Let's do that!" (They obviously didn't have my account pulled up.)

When she pulled my account up, she gasped, "A penny? We're billing you for a penny?" I explained that I had no issue paying it, but it just didn't make sense to write a check and use a stamp to pay a penny. I'd just tack the penny onto another bill and another bill would be coming soon as I had another procedure planned. She agreed. I thought they were done, but no. The next month another bill came asking for the penny and threatening to start charging me interest and reporting me to the credit bureaus if I didn't pay it.  I got a postcard from the post office, taped a penny to it, and sent it to them. They sent me a receipt back along with a letter recommending not sending cash through the mail as it could be easily stolen. 

They spent several dollars in postage to retrieve a penny. It made no sense to me, but they did what they did. It also made no sense to the people I talked with there, but they did it anyway. 

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@gardenman 

We had a similar situation happen with the company I work for and when we were audited they told us we had to collect otherwise the company would be fined....and our CEO talked about it in a meeting and how some of the bureaucrats just have no common sense whatsoever......And how much it cost our company to comply.....SMH

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Yeah, common sense is not very common these days. Bureaucrats and bureaucracy rule the world and they're among the people with the least common sense.

Each year I went to school I had to prove I still had hemophilia. The guidance office would admit I'd had it the year before and there was no cure, but each year I'd have to provide a fresh letter from my hematologist verifying that I still had hemophilia.

When I applied for SSI I had to see an ophthalmologist to prove I had an artificial eye. I could take it out and show it to them, but that wasn't good enough. They needed a letter and proof from an ophthalmologist.

One of my old hematologists had a patient who'd lost a leg to bone cancer and had an artificial leg and even though he nearly always wore shorts showing the artificial leg, the hematologist had to provide written verification that he'd lost his leg. It's more than a little crazy sometimes and can cost the system a ton of money.

[chrystaltree]

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@gardenman wrote:

I was billed by a major hospital for several months for a penny. I thought it was silly. (My total medical expenses at the facility since 1979 were for over a million dollars.) Around the third month, they called and offered to set up a payment plan for the unpaid amount where I could make monthly installments. I said, "Great! Let's do that!" (They obviously didn't have my account pulled up.)

When she pulled my account up, she gasped, "A penny? We're billing you for a penny?" I explained that I had no issue paying it, but it just didn't make sense to write a check and use a stamp to pay a penny. I'd just tack the penny onto another bill and another bill would be coming soon as I had another procedure planned. She agreed. I thought they were done, but no. The next month another bill came asking for the penny and threatening to start charging me interest and reporting me to the credit bureaus if I didn't pay it.  I got a postcard from the post office, taped a penny to it, and sent it to them. They sent me a receipt back along with a letter recommending not sending cash through the mail as it could be easily stolen. 

They spent several dollars in postage to retrieve a penny. It made no sense to me, but they did what they did. It also made no sense to the people I talked with there, but they did it anyway. 

That's exactly why the hospital I worked for stopped billing low dollar amounts.  It cost that hospital something like $24 to process a bill.  And we thought it was ridiculous to bill  a patient $9 after we had received insurance payment.  We did small dollar write offs.  Even with larger amounts where the patient balance was under $100, we only billed the patient twice.  Two bills, 90 days apart and if they failed to pay or request a payment plan, we wrote it off as "unrecoverable debt".  

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[gardenman]

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@chrystaltree wrote:

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@gardenman wrote:

I was billed by a major hospital for several months for a penny. I thought it was silly. (My total medical expenses at the facility since 1979 were for over a million dollars.) Around the third month, they called and offered to set up a payment plan for the unpaid amount where I could make monthly installments. I said, "Great! Let's do that!" (They obviously didn't have my account pulled up.)

When she pulled my account up, she gasped, "A penny? We're billing you for a penny?" I explained that I had no issue paying it, but it just didn't make sense to write a check and use a stamp to pay a penny. I'd just tack the penny onto another bill and another bill would be coming soon as I had another procedure planned. She agreed. I thought they were done, but no. The next month another bill came asking for the penny and threatening to start charging me interest and reporting me to the credit bureaus if I didn't pay it.  I got a postcard from the post office, taped a penny to it, and sent it to them. They sent me a receipt back along with a letter recommending not sending cash through the mail as it could be easily stolen. 

They spent several dollars in postage to retrieve a penny. It made no sense to me, but they did what they did. It also made no sense to the people I talked with there, but they did it anyway. 

That's exactly why the hospital I worked for stopped billing low dollar amounts.  It cost that hospital something like $24 to process a bill.  And we thought it was ridiculous to bill  a patient $9 after we had received insurance payment.  We did small dollar write offs.  Even with larger amounts where the patient balance was under $100, we only billed the patient twice.  Two bills, 90 days apart and if they failed to pay or request a payment plan, we wrote it off as "unrecoverable debt".  

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Yeah, that's smart. Some people would abuse it by always underpaying, but even then it's probably a win for the system. In my case, it was caused because I had a 20% co-pay, and the hospital/insurer and I rounded off the amount I owed differently resulting in a penny difference. Once I saw what the insurance paid, I just wrote a check for the difference and sent it in before getting the official bill. The hospital calculated the co-pay differently (rounding up or down while the insurer rounded in the other direction) and felt I still owed a penny.

I ended up paying a lot more than a penny to buy the postcard to send them the penny, but the hospital was thirty miles away and not worth driving there to hand-deliver the penny. It was dumb to me, to the people I talked to, and to anyone with common sense, but they had their rules. They got their penny, so they were happy. I have no idea why they sent me a receipt for it. I certainly wasn't going to fight them if they said they didn't get it.

[Twins Mom]

@gardenman 

Funny you should relay this experience.  Your response was priceless - too bad the upper echelon does not have pleasure of receiving mail.

My experience was similar. Mom received a $10 bill from hospital and I called telling them I knew it was an error.  After threats of going to collections, I did not want her stressed so I paid.  Over a year later we got a check in that amount with letter saying an audit revealed we overpaid.  Between paperwork, phone calls, audit, etc wonder how much that $10 cost them!

[PhillyGirl23]

????????

Why is this being shared?