It all began innocently enough though I should have known that little is easy in brave new utopian digital world given my age and experience. I retired recently and instead of signing up for the vision insurance I already had through my union, I decided to go with a vision insurance offered by Anthem/Blue Cross/Blue View Vision Value Plan (or whatever else they call themselves; these corporations love to be called by various monikers) to citizens of New York state.
That was a mistake I should not have made since I knew that I never had any trouble with my union insurance but I experienced all sorts of hair pulling trials and tribulations when I signed up for New York state retirement. Of course, I had no problem with this corporation for two years while never using it. When I wanted to use it, however, and went to my webpage to look for providers they offered me providers in California. That would have been helpful if I lived in California instead of New York, the place where Empire sent my bills. Surreal. I asked them to fix this problem and stopped recurring automatic payment until they did because I no longer trusted the competence of this corporation. Whether they did fix it or not I do not know since I found a provider by going to the websites of optometrists in the New York city in which I live.
Now, of course, I had to pay by going into the website around the due date every month. And so I did. However, this immediately proved to be a Sisyphean task. I did not receive a paper bill for June though I had received one every month previously. When I tried to pay on the website on two occasions the bill came up as $0.00. I paid but, surprise surprise, I paid nothing. Eventually, I got a you are late in your memo from the company. I paid the two month charge they wanted but it was refunded and so no payment. Finally, I put the bill on my credit card and shocked, shocked, it worked.
I did, of course, make use of customer service during this nightmare but this proved to be a waste of my time. I called the 800 number on the back of my Empire card only to be told to call the number on the back of my card which I did three times with the same response. Monty Python meets Franz Kafka. Then I went online to customer service. The chat was a waste of time as I was chatting to a bot and bots are typically more unhelpful than helpful. The message centre proved to be largely a waste of my time. Most customer service operatives cloned the standard corporate bullshte about we are sorry and go here, the good old run around in circles chasing ones own tail and never getting anywhere experience. The one who actually responded was only somewhat helpful. Next, I contacted the Attorney General of New York but nothing has happened here as yet. Later, I contacted New York Civil service (I tried to contact them initially by phone but despite leaving a call back number I was never called back) only to be sent into a labyrinth of encrypted messages that require access to Microsoft and yet more passwords which I am simply not up for.
Hopefully, the credit card payment will go though and take my coverage up to August. Then I am off to my old vision insurance company so I don't have to fuck around with this bureaucratic takes you an eternity go get anywhere and get anything done bullshite.
An update: I called Anthem Blue Cross and upgraded to a Basic Vision Plan. I had the operator set up and automatic payment deduction from my credit card to pay for this. I innocently and stupidly thought everything would work this time. Silly me. No automatic deduction payment was taken and now I am once again doing the phone rag with this corporation, the most incompetent kafkaesque corporation I have ever encountered. Caveat emptor. I suppose it is time to think about getting vision insurance from another source that will be awful but not as awful as Anthem. Oh and by the way, despite promises that I would receive a bill by snail mail from this incompetent corporation, I have not.
A postscript: Here at Empire Blue Vision we are proud of how stoopid and how stoopidly fundamentalist and literalist we are. If you want to upgrade your vision plan online well you can and you can't. We will enroll you but we won't recognise that you are already enrolled in a plan and already have an online account with us because we are stoopid (and we don't ask questions). If you want to call us and try to straighten out things well we can and we can't. We can eliminate your redundant account but we can't charge you for the new upgrade and simultaneously arrange for direct payment at the same time because we are stoopid and we have one of the stoopdist online and telephone centre customer service centres in the nation, hell in the world. Empire Blue Vision, proud to bea stoopid and so is our fundamentalist online and telephone customer service. Call us at 1.800.BMorons to sign up now.
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