Friday, October 9, 2009

Outrage of the Week No. 1

Almost made it through the week without this type of nonsense. Just a few minutes ago my phone rang, and it was an automated call from Centegra Health Systems to call them back on a toll-free number.

Talk about a way to lose a customer!

If they want to talk to me, they can call me! I absolutely object to an automated call to me, asking me to call them! Does anyone else feel this way?

When I called back, I barked (politely) at the customer service rep who answered the phone and admitted quickly that, yes, indeed, they do make some outgoing calls like that. I realized that she doesn't make the rules; she just works there.

Now, it's not like they have called me a dozen times and can't reach me. This was the first call to me.

I'm waiting now for the supervisor to call me back, because I refused to wait on Hold to talk to the supervisor and didn't want voicemail.

But even the supervisor doesn't make the rules at Centegra, so I'll find out who does.

3 comments:

Dave Labuz said...

Hey Gus - you don't mention what that call was supposed to accomplish.

If it was one of those unctious little calls regarding "how did we do during your hospitalization" calls, i.e; marketing - or even the billing department (and the robo-call identified its purpose as such), well OK.

If it was a call directly regarding your condition and treatment, then it's an outrage.

On second thought, if there was no identification whatsoever in the robo-call as to its purpose, that's even worse. Yeah, robo-call a heart patient! LOL!

Stupid!

I immediately hang up on ALL robo calls, regardless, before the audio even begins.

DBTR

Gus said...

DBTR, it was a call from the Billing Department. When I called to pay by phone a couple of weeks ago, the credit card payment didn't get processed correctly. My guess was that a data entry clerk mistyped my credit card number.

We cleared that up the next day, and it took them four days to process it that time. I tracked it to make sure it got applied to my account.

I agree with you about robo-calls. By the way, the supervisor was supposed to call me and didn't.

Richard W Gorski, M.D. said...

You can bet the rules are not made by the doctors...they have been left out of the picture years ago. Probably made by some bean counter or recent MBA. Health care today is not about health its about money and survival of the hospital and not the patient.