Yay for the underdog!

Early in June after checking our credit report, we discovered there were two medical collections on our report from 2004. It has taken me several weeks to investigate exactly what happened. Turns out when I went to my first prenatal appointment (when I was pregnant with Hannah), the blood work was sent to a lab. This lab apparently did not have any insurance information on me nor a current address. So two months later, they sent it to a collections agency.

The collections agency, our insurance company, and the hospital's lab, medical records, and billing departments all at one point, told us that we'll just have to pay for it. It's been frustrating, to say the least, to explain this long situation EVERY TIME I get on the phone. And customer service apparently doesn't mean that you can speak with your original customer service associate....or that they will actually care to understand the problem. While giving a summary of our situation, I could almost hear, on the other end of the line, their tone change when I used the phrase "collections agency." Immediately they didn't want to deal with it and seemed to assume if I let it get this far, I must be extremely irresponsible.

It was a beautiful day when I picked up my medical records which showed that we did, in fact, provide our current address and health insurance. And to top it off, the DIRECTOR of patient records called ME and APOLOGIZED for THEIR MISTAKE!!! Aaaaaah...it feels so very good to be vindicated!

Supposedly it will still take 3-6 months for these collections to be cleared from our records. But I don't care...it's $1000 that we don't have to pay. I cringe at how close I was to paying it, just to be done with it.

So here's what I've learned about this frustrating experience:
-Check your credit report every year. (I know, I know, I learned this the hard way.)
-Just because "big company" says I "just need to pay for it this time," doesn't necessarily mean they are right. Keep digging and asking questions....even if they don't want to go the extra mile for you. Being a nuisance has paid off.