People who
are on various lists and groups with me are probably getting tired of me saying
this over and over, but folks you really NEED to read every bill you get,
understand it, question what you don’t understand because in doing so you can
save your family hundreds if not thousands every year.
Billing errors are a huge drain on our
economy. Most are truly accidents, but
others you sometimes have to wonder about.
Some are small others, like some I recently discovered are HUGE!
Here are
some examples I have “discovered” in the past and when I suggested to others
they check their similar bills they too “discovered” they were being over
billed.
Let’s start
with utility companies. One I really
keep an eye out for is on the power bill.
Especially a program called “Share the Warmth” or similar titles. More than once that item has appeared on my
bill as a payment due. It supposedly is
for paying the bills for those who can’t afford their winter heating bills, it
is NOT a mandatory part of the bill. It
is voluntary. Only they add it to your
bill and you have to “volunteer” to be exempted from paying it. The amount varies from month to month because
it is based on a percentage of your bill.
Not only is
their system backwards on how you join it (they sign you up and you have to ask
to be removed from it) the money does not, generally, go to those in need. There have been numerous news stories on
this. It goes into a general fund to
cover people who have defaulted on bills and does nothing to help those
currently struggling, it goes to help keep the power company’s profit margin
up, plain and simple.
I keep a very
close eye on this because quite frankly to me the cost of the power company
doing business is their problem not mine.
I always have it removed from my bill when it pops up.
Land line
phone companies are very good at insisting you have to purchase their packages
that include conference calling, long distance etc when you get a land line in
order to have internet service. Only you
CAN opt out of those services, they simply don’t tell you that unless you ask.
Why pay for them when you have all that on your cell phone? They don’t tell you that you don’t have to
pay for a package, they just bill you for it until you protest.
There is
also a process called “Slamming” which scammers use to add to your phone bill
without you realizing it. You sign up
for a sweepstakes, they want your phone number to “notify you if you win” but
what they don’t tell you is when you voluntarily give them your phone number
you are signing up for their “special” call forwarding, long distance or other
service. Because you have signed up for
the sweepstakes technically the phone company has to add it to your bill—same with
cell phones—until you demand it be removed, and then that can be a very lengthy
problem. We once had to change our phone
number to get the company to stop billing us for a service we did not want. Then they tried to send us to "collections" for services not received.
Cell phones,
oh let me count the ways I have found errors on cell phone bills. International calling—never signed up for it,
never used it, but it was included in our package for an extra fee, extra phone
line charges when no extra phones were added, activation fees on a phone that
had been active for three years, double activation fees, at two different
prices, I might add for one new phone purchased, data fees—when we have an
unlimited data plan, roaming fees when we never left our immediate area, taxes
for another state than I live in, double insurance—on an old phone I didn’t
even want insured, deductible on phone replacement when my insurance policy
clearly stated there was no deductible.
The list goes on and on, for cell phones.
My absolute
favorite on the cell phone was when we were still paying by the “minute”. Ds actually worked for that particular cell
phone company at the time and his service was suppose to be free even though dh
and my phones were by the minute, so it made it made the situation even more
stupid.
He made a
single phone call to a friend in another city.
The call lasted 15 minutes, we were bill for 45 minutes worth of time in
that 15 minute time frame. According to
their phone records he had hung up and redialed over 50 times in that 15 minute
time frame. WHILE talking to her constantly
for the 15 minutes.
Yes the
bill, showed a continuous speaking time of 15 minutes as well as 50 times of
dialing from the same number to the same number in that exact same 15
minutes. A physical impossibility. Yet it took numerous phone calls to get a
human to understand that it could not be done, especially on a bill that was
free to begin with. We are talking over
$100 on that particular incident.
Fine, you
say, so that one was over $100, the others they are peanuts not worth my time
or effort. Really? As Granny always said “Mind your pennies and
your dollars will mind themselves.”
But I
mentioned earlier thousands of dollars, oh yeah, billing errors that large can
truly happen, and in fact do happen on a daily basis all over the US in just
about every town, city, borough, you name it.
The biggest
offenders I have found are medical bills.
When my father died I was executor of his estate and was amazed as I
went through his final bills that the hospital had charged him for meals—when he
had been on nothing by mouth the last week of his life—respiratory services,
room charges and much more up to THREE DAYS AFTER he had died! Have you priced
a hospital room charge lately, we are talking hundreds per day.
I thought
that to be a one time fluke, then my grandmother died. This time it was prescriptions delivered to
her nursing home and supposedly dispensed to her days after she had died. Okay, so maybe that is twice and still that
one isn’t in the thousands of dollars.
Then my
wonderful husband had a series of illnesses the last of last year and the first
two months of this year. What a comedy
of errors. These are some of the items I have found and had corrected so far. I won’t name hospitals, or
doctors but here’s what I have ran into so far, and he is still being treated
for some of his ailments. I shudder to think what else I will find as we go forward.
1. My husband has Medicare part A, which
covers the hospital bills only, it works in conjunction with our other
insurance provider to pay 100% of the actual hospital bill, IF it is ever
applied. It wasn’t. Seriously, the hospital never filed for
it. UNTIL I realized they hadn’t and
insisted they do so. The savings, over
$11,000 on the first visit and roughly $9,000 on the second.
2. One doctor billed us for TWO initial
visits. The key term here is “initial”
there can only be one initial visit. The
difference between an initial visit and a regular hospital visit is $180.
3. Transitional care to another doctor $470,
only it wasn’t another doctor it was our regular doctor. So who was transitioning where? The office
visit should have been our co-pay of $35, so $435 difference there.
4. Insurance deductibles, folks watch
these closely. Because of when the
visits happened we had to meet our deductible twice, because one hospital stay
was in 2014 and the other was two weeks later in 2015 for an entirely different
reason. That is understandable, it is
two different years.
However, our 2015
deductible is $5,000 and we were still being charged for deductible at the $9,000
mark. The insurance company simply hadn’t
noted that we met our deductible with the first hospital stay in early January
and kept applying our balance due to deductibles. That’s $4,000 when I stopped that procedure, how much higher it could of gone I have no idea, but for our math we'll use the $4,000.
5. Insurance not filed. Doctor bills have been received where visits
have never been filed on our insurance, you often have to really read your bill
to catch this one, because unless you compare the office visit charges to what
the insurance company says has been filed you can miss this one. It is especially hard if the bill is many
pages long, but it is definitely worth the effort to wade through it one item
at a time. That was nearly $300.
6. Co-pays and deductibles charged by
hospitals and doctors upfront, and then they still get paid in full by the
insurance, meaning they get your money and the insurance money resulting in you
having a credit balance, only unless you read your insurance payouts you are
likely to not catch this and request the refund. $450 on our bills so far.
Refunds were requested of course. All companies concerned have agreed I have the money coming and will send me a check, they say.
7. Billing for services not
received. Therapy sessions not given was
this offender. Filed complaint got them
backed off $200.
8. Payments made by us that were “returned
to the insurance company due to insurance overpayment” only at that point the insurance had not paid
a penny, and there would be a balance still due for the services rendered after
the insurance was paid. $70.
There have
been other things, but these were the ones that came to mind while typing
this. I truly don’t believe that most of
these were purposeful, I simply think it is because people are not doing due
diligence on their jobs. While one doctor's office was a huge offender several have had these errors. Had I not been vigilant
in my bill reading we would have been out an extra $25,857 minimum (remember the deductible could have kept climbing).
That is more than some households make in a
year. That is how much taking time to
read and understand our medical bills at the minimum I have saved us so far in just the last 3
months on medical bills. So is it worth
your while to take time, to sit down in a quiet space and study your
bills? Absolutely!
My husband
estimates that by reading bills, and RECEIPTS (I catch items on grocery and
other purchase receipts constantly. Items
double scanned, or charged at regular price when they are on sale generally) for items
purchased that I save us roughly $10,000 a year on average. It generally only takes a few minutes to read
the bills and if more of us did, fewer errors would be made.
Jan who says
she has a lot better places to put that $25,857 minimum so far this year than in someone
else’s pocket in OK
