Consumer Hall of Shame

Here are three recent entries in the Consumer Hall of Shame:

1. Verizon's Dirty Tricks. This one's pretty unbelievable. Last Friday while I was working at home, my broadband connection from Comcast went out. That's not particularly unusual, so I ignored it for about 30 minutes. When it didn't come back up, I checked my television and the cable there was also out. About that time, I noticed two men working on the main cable/telephone line for my block, where it runs behind my house. One was literally walking down the thick line (holding onto another thick line above it, running some kind of cable down the line.

Fine, I thought--Comcast is doing something to the line; soon they'll be done and by cable will be back up. After a couple hours, however, nothing changed and the men were no longer in sight. Curious to find out when my cable would be back up, I went around the corner to find them, but they were gone. A friendly neighbor told me it was not Comcast working on the line--instead, it was Verizon, which apparently is stringing fiber optic cable in our neighborhood. The neighbor said the Verizon guys had left about a half hour ago.

So, I called Comcast to report my cable outage. They did a couple tests to confirm what I told them--that the cable was out from the main line due to something somebody had done earlier in the day. Comcast was friendly and helpful, but couldn't get anyone out until Sunday afternoon.

TWO DAYS without cable--my kids were horrified! Two days without broadband--my wife and I were horrified!

Comcast came along and fixed the cable on Sunday, as promised. The repair guy showed me the problem: quite clearly, the #%*&#* Verizon guys CUT my cable. Thanks alot Verizon! Do you really think that's going to get me to switch to your service?!

There will be more on this later--I plan to send a strong letter to Verizon and to the County, which licenses its operation.

2. Carefirst BlueCross BlueShield--Last Laugh's On Me. Recently my nanny, who gets her health insurance from CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield of Virginia (paid by me), received an unkind letter from CareFirst, out of the blue. The letter, from a nurse, accused my nanny of lying on her application for insurance, based on a review of her medical records. (Our nanny, a hispanic immigrant from Panama and a fully naturalized citizen, speaks English fairly well, but she has difficulty reading either Spanish or English.) In essence, the nurse said our nanny had a series of pre-existing conditions, including diet-controlled diabetes, hypertension and arthritis, that she'd failed to disclose when she applied. Accordingly, CareFirst was terminating her insurance, effective immediately.

The letter said nothing about how to appeal the decision, and Carefirst gave my nanny no inkling before the letter that it was investigating her for fraud.

After completing a project, I took up the issue of whether my nanny had, indeed, committed any kind of fraud. I had her obtain her medical records and carefully went through them with her. There was nothing in them about the conditions alleged in the Carefirst letter. Furthermore, the dates of her care with healthcare provider in question did not jibe with the dates in the CareFirst letter. I drafted a letter to CareFirst and had my nanny carefully review it. All this took a few weeks. In the meantime, my nanny got hit with all kinds of bills that got bounced by CareFirst, which evidently had been sitting on them for several months.

CareFirst responded to my letter by asking for the medical records I had obtained from the nanny. (CareFirst, of course, had access to these records already--that's how this all got started.) A few more weeks passed by, all the while with my nanny in anguish about her medical bills and whether she'd ever be able to get insurance again. Finally, CareFirst conceded that it had made a mistake--it had reviewed the records of another woman, with the same name. Duh! The other woman had a different birthdate, SS # and CareFirst I.D. number, so the mistake was rather obvious.

CareFirst reinstated my nanny's insurance--now all we have to do is sort out the financial mess that occurred in the intervening weeks.

However, I was not content to leave it at that, having been pretty heavily inconvenienced myself. I was particularly troubled by the original letter out of the blue to my nanny, with no information on what she could or should do in response. If my nanny had not had a former lawyer (or some other sophisticated person) as a boss, she probably would have just given up and gone without insurance.

So, I sent a letter to the State Insurance Commission complaining about CareFirst's termination procedures. I must say, the Insurance Commission has been prompt and diligent in following up. Recently, the Commission cc'd me on a letter to CareFirst, in which the Commission found that the letter to my nanny "is in non-compliance with the Code of Virginia." Better yet, in advance of determining whether to penalize CareFirst, the Commission has asked "for a list of all Virginia insureds that have had their coverage terminated with out the proper [ ] notice as required by statute for the past three years."

Take that, CareFirst.

3. Bad Communique From XM Radio. Compared with the incidents above this isn't much--just plain old corporate idiocy. I have XM Radio satellite radio in my car, which I just love. Not too long ago, I suddenly stopped receiving everything except the rather annoying introductory channel. Last time I called XM about something, they politely told me I could usually fix my problems by visiting their website.

So, I went to the website. It is not the easiest website to use--every time you do something on it, it opens a new window. Anyway, I checked my account, which it said was fine. Then I "refreshed" my radio signal, which required me to drive around for 20 minutes listening to the annoying introductory channel. Unfortunately, my service did not return.

Following one more refresh attempt, I called XM. The woman I reached checked my file (basically went to the same internet file with my account information--she must get hundreds of open windows on her computer by the end of a day.) She didn't see anything wrong. Then she said to hold on. After a couple minutes she let me know that the credit card to which my account had been linked was no longer valid. True enough--the card company gave me a new card because of a suspicious fraud issue at their end of the line. I had actually tried to put in the new number on XM's website, but there did not seem to be a way to do it (as I said, not a very good website). (I did receive a postcard from XM asking for a new credit card number and authorization. I sent it back, but evidently something went wrong along the way, otherwise I wouldn't have been having this call.)

Now here's my beef. After a few more minutes of holding, the woman at XM came back on the line to inform me that XM had cut off my service. Mind you, I get a mass email from XM every week with the latest info on the XM world. I get periodic emails letting me know about special offers. My subscriber profile on the XM website has my correct home phone number, cell number and email address. Clearly, someone at XM could easily have reached me via one of these forms of communication and said "Mr. XCurmudgeon, we're having a problem with your credit card--we're sure you'd love to keep listening to XM Channel 46 with the classic rock tunes, so if you'll give us your new credit card number, we'll keep our satellite beaming to you."

But no. Instead, they CUT OFF my service. Didn't even indicate that on the website, so when I checked to see the problem, I couldn't find out. Of course, I eventually reached out to XM myself--the prospect of listening to that annoying introductory channel a minute longer was more than I could take!

Here's some advice XM: reach out to your customer first. Siriusly.