Revenge of COBRA
Thursday, July 30 2009
(Photo from flickr user robwallace under a CC license.)
I woke up this morning and realized that my COBRA payment is due, and even if I get it to the mail today, it won’t arrive until early next week. ADP, the company that processes my premiums, has a long history of cutting me off if my payment isn’t received on the first of the month precisely, so I decided to use their web portal again.
The bill ADP mails me with their premium no longer includes any information about online payment, oddly enough. So I had to go fishing in Google, and I got the wrong website. For a few minutes, I kept getting “no such user” in response to my attempts to log-in. This was only slightly less frustrating when I realized it was their “Flexible Savings Account” website, which is totally different from their benefits website except that it looks almost exactly the same.
Back to Google, where I then found the right website. I tried entering my name and password, and it told me: “Your password has expired”. There was no option to reset my password or log-in under a different password. I then tried “Forgot my password” – which did nothing but boot me out to the log-in page again. Then I remembered the website doesn’t work with Firefox (or Safari, apparently).
I switched on a Windows laptop and fired up Internet Explorer, then found the website. My password was still expired, so I clicked “forgot password”. This time it gave me a security question: “What is your pet’s name?” I tried one pet. Denied. I tried another. Denied. I tried both pets’ names. Locked out. The website told me to “Please contact ADP directly”, so I clicked on the link. The resultant page told me to “consult your premium documents for information on contacting ADP”. So – forty-five minutes of my day, and I am now literally back at page one of the process.
I found ADP’s number and called, not very optimistic I would get anywhere at 7:00 AM. I listened to their menus and 1′d and #’d my way through until I was listening to a recorded voice read out my payments for the last five months. “Your payment of. Four. Hundred. Forty. Two. Dollars. And. Fifty. Nine. Cents. was received on. July. Third. Your payment of. Four. Hundred. Forty. Two. Dollars. And….” Since this was clearly not helping, I pressed “0″ – even though the menu had never offered me that option. It worked – sort of. I got connected to recording that said “please call back during normal business hours” – and hung up on me. I saw that coming, at least. I will try again later.
In the meantime, I am declaring myself ‘off-limits’ to any and all arguments about the relative merits of the free market in health care. Normally, I try to be a little bit charitable and reasonable in such matters, but not today. I have given an hour of my life to the vicissitudes of the market, and it has gotten me nowhere and nothing. And I would point out: there are plenty of people who want our entire health care system to work this way. I’m not buying it – and today, I’m not even willing to listen to it.
So, did you finally get payment credited?