No human involvement

  Update from yesterday’s post:

After two emails and an office visit (for which I was chastised by the head of HR for appearing “unannounced”—her actual word; evidently an “open-door policy”—again, her words—means something other than actually, you know, “open”), the chick reputedly managing benefits for my company reluctantly emailed me what she said was our dental plan ID number, along with the advice that I could call Cigna.

Which, when I gave it to the dentist yesterday, turned out to be…not anything recognizable as a plan number for Cigna. (Look—I’m clueless about it, but in this matter I’m inclined to take the word of anyone in a dental office over that of anyone in HR.)

So I had to pay $130 for the consultation and will need to square it away with the insurance company. Deep joy—because there’s nothing more fun than dental work, unless it’s dental work plus fighting with an insurance company.

I should have known that with one job to do, this chick would not get it right. And that when she hawked up a response that basically was “here’s-the-plan-number-call-Cigna-to-find-out-anything-useful-now-go-away”, I should just have called the insurance company. It may be tempting the gods to say that Cigna couldn’t do a worse job of customer service than HR, but since I’m going to have to do it anyway, I should have gone first to the horse’s mouth instead of the other end.