An Afternoon in The Life of Momagement Administrivia

I arrived home after a relaxing daughter/grandson visit, and then a spat of errands. The day’s mail was thick with what would take down most of the rest of my afternoon.

There was a bill from mom’s dentist, which prompted me to call the retirement office of the university where she capped her career. You see, only the retirement office can change mom’s mailing address with her dental insurnace. I have jumped through BIG hoops to get the retirement office to talk to me, and was assured as soon as they had the requisite paper uploaded into their system, they would dispatch my wishes (that would be changing mom’s address with her dental insurance company.) Being an out-of-state retiree (yes, I know I’ve explained some of this, but it took down hours of my afternoon, so I am compelled to share the madness in more detail), the insurance company sends claim checks to mom rather than the dentist. And because only the retirement office can change mom’s address, one check (God bless the mail man in our wee town who knows to toss mom’s mail into our box regardless of where it’s addressed to) went astray. The dentist would like to be paid, please. Who blames him? Not I.

My first call to the retirement office (they all start off with at least 20 to 30 minutes on hold while you’re assured of help momentarily) ended up with the gal asking if I had my mothers POA, and my assuring her, she did too. Same with the next piece of documentation. LOOK IN YOUR SYSTEM, YOU IMBECILE!!! Don’t ask me questions you can answer yourself! It finally sounded like we were on a roll, when she put me on hold for another 30 minutes, and then, you guessed it, the call dropped.

My next call started out much the same way: Long hold time, frivolous questions, but then a spark of customer service when the service agent asked for my phone number so she could call me back rather than have me wait on hold. Did she call me back? No. Not before 5PM.

All of this is to find out if the retirement office has changed mom’s mailing address with the insurance company. When (if ever) I find this info out, I’ll call the insurance company and have them reissue the check, then call the patient dentist to update him on when to expect more than half of a thousand bucks from the insurance company, and $87 from me.

To be sure, I was a model of politeness while on the phone, but wanted to reach through the phone line and instruct these folks how to do their job, roughly.

This is the maddening crap that eats my days. All I want to do is have a check reissued. That’s it. This has been going on since June. There… I’m done gnashing my teeth.