Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Progressive Nonsense

Got love American companies lack of ethics. We are a Progressive customer. Imagine our surprise when our monthly rate goes up to $455 a month out of the blue. Purely unethical behavior on Progressive's part.

When we noticed the mistake because all of a sudden there was a much larger charge pulled out of our account than previously, we called. Not surprisingly. Should have noticed prior to them pulling it out, but live and learn, my bad.

So I call, and what do they tell me? They automatically added my son Ken to the policy as a driver. They said they automatically added him because he turned 16 or got his license. Unfortunately for them, he turned sixteen 8 months ago and currently does not have a license. There is a reason I hadn't added him to the policy as a driver you twits.

Yes, I should have noticed it before they pulled it from the account. And yes I should have called to have them fix it. Like I said, my bad. But that's where the scam comes in. They automatically changed my policy without my approval and billed for it. Which means I have to take the time to call and have it fixed. I assume their hope is that I don't call and get it fixed, and they walk off with free money.

At a minimum, they made me take time for something they did without my permission. Next time, I will send them a bill, at my hourly rate for any part thereof. In other words, if it's a 5 minute call, I'll bill them for an hour.

I will say, the lady on the phone was great. She fixed it, and then found us some additional discounts. Which I really appreciated, but the fact that I had to call for their unethical behavior doesn't change. I will also say that we've had no problems with Progressive other than this. Compared to our experiences at Hillcrest, a Cleveland Clinic Hospital, Progressive has been great.

But here's the thing, I think Hillcrest/Cleveland Clinic is just plain incompetent. They can't help it. This issue with Progressive was not incompetence. They can't add him as a driver since he doesn't have a valid License number which is a required field in the data. They just did it.

If your curious, Hillcrest has been sending us a bill for $54 which was rejected by Medical Mutual of Ohio. I figured it was a processing issue so I sat on it until I recently got the last and final warning bill from Hillcrest (actually billing is out of Akron). So I called Medical Mutual and asked why this was rejected, and they said they never received the diagnosis/doctor's report on the charge. In other words, Hillcrest didn't do their job to get paid. This bill is just one example, and I won't go in to the fact that they gave my daughter the wrong vaccination and tried to charge us $200. Pure and simple incompetence.

And yes I know I'm over reacting to the Progressive nonsense, but it annoyed the hell out me. And I wanted to rant.

No comments:

Post a Comment