I recently had to have a kidney stone removed.  The hospital estimated the cost of the procedure, and offered me a 20% discount – if I paid my portion on the day of the procedure.  I paid the estimated amount and had the procedure.

Today, I received the actual explanation of benefits from my insurance company.  I am happy to report that my portion of the cost of the procedure is several hundred dollars less than the amount I paid to the hospital.  When estimating my portion, the hospital included my full deductible, unaware that, due to several doctors’ visits prior to the procedure, I had already met most of my deductible.

I called the hospital and spoke to the billing department.  A refund for the overpayment has been issued.  I should receive it in a week or so.

It’s always a good idea to check – and then recheck – your medical bills.  Many insurance companies now allow you to view your account information online.  This makes it very easy to view recent activity and to check account balances.

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Keeping A Close Eye On Those Medical Bills

This will be my last post from my laptop this week.  The hinge connecting the lid of the laptop to the base of the laptop is broken.  I contacted Lenovo’s customer support staff last week, and they sent a box, via FedEx, that I’ll use to ship my laptop to them for repair.  I purchased the laptop, a Lenovo y510, last June, and I really like it.  Hopefully, the repair will take just a few days, and I’ll have it back at some point next week.

For the rest of the week, I’ll be posting from my wife’s Acer Aspire One- an awesome little computer that I purchased for her last Christmas.  I really like the Aspire One, and while I wouldn’t want to depend on it for all of our computing needs, it should be just fine for a week or so.

I must say, I was pleasantly surprised with Lenovo’s customer service representative.  After looking up the customer support number on the Lenovo website, a task which took about one minute, I called the number, and a representative answered in less than twenty seconds.  Five minutes later, after assessing the problem and checking the warranty status of my computer, he asked for my email, my address, and promised to send the box to my home.  He even told me when the box would arrive at my house.  Sure enough, it arrived today, just as promised.  Man, it feels good to get good customer service.  Hopefully, the repair will go as smoothly as the phone call!

I’ve copied the contents of my computer’s hard drive, not once, but twice!  I have two external hard drives, and I simply copied and pasted the entire contents of the computer’s hard drive to both external drives.  I also removed all passwords from my browser, but not until first exporting a copy of them to an SD card.  Hopefully, they’ll just fix the hinge, but I wanted to be prepared, should all of my data be corrupted.

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Laptop In Need Of Repair

If you are enrolled in Kroger’s Baby Club rewards programs, be sure to check your mail.  I just received a letter from them, notifying me that they have decided to end their current Baby Club program, effective yesterday.  Inside the letter was a coupon, equal to the value of my current points balance – in my case $10.  I am a little disappointed with the fact that the program has been discontinued, but thankful for the $10 coupon.

As I have mentioned before, I actually enjoy shopping for groceries.   I use my grocery store price book to track the prices at Kroger, and I have noticed a definite uptick in prices over the last year, especially for their store-branded items.  The Baby Club was a nice way to save a few bucks, and now that it has been discontinued, I may decide to look for a new grocery store of choice.

As a final note, the last line in the letter from Kroger did mention that they will be sure to send special offers to my family.  My hope is, and only time will tell, that the coupons they send will compensate for the loss of the rewards program.  We shall see.

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Kroger Ending Baby Club Rewards Program

I recently sold an item on eBay.  When the buyer tried to make payment via Paypal, the payment was rejected.  I contacted Paypal, via the customer service number listed on their website and within two minutes, I was connected to a customer service representative and the problem with my account was promptly corrected.  (For some reason, when setting up my new account, I checked a box that needed to be unchecked.)

Normally, we only read about bad customer service experiences, so I thought it might be nice to report a good experience.  The CSR was polite and she knew how to fix the problem.

One note – The welcome message asks for an online pin number.  This number was assigned when I opened my Paypal account, online, and clicked the ‘contact’ tab.  Also, in order to bypass some of the voice prompts and get to a real person, I repeatedly pressed ‘zero’.  So, before you call, login to your account, click the contact tab, acquire an online pin number, make the call, enter your pin number, and then press ‘zero’ until you get a CSR.

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A Good Experience With Paypal

I’ve spent the last two hours, trying to get in touch with a customer service representative from my long distance provider, MCI.  After 11 phone calls, six disconnections, and five transfers, I have decided to change service providers.  Our local phone company has begun to offer a bundled plan of long distance / local service / and DSL.  I might go with them.  I’ll run the numbers and do a little research and let you all know.  Ninety-five percent of our calls are made intra-state, so I need a plan that offers low in-Georgia rates.  The MCI plan is unlimited long distance.  I signed up with them more than five years ago – and they’ve steadily raised their rates.  I’ve been meaning to shop around – and this latest customer service issue has given me the motivation to actually do so.  I won’t go into the details of the issue, except to say that it could be resolved in less than one minute, should I actually be connected to the right person.  But, the financial department refers me to the customer service department – and the customer service depart refers me to the financial department.

Funny side note – After getting disconnected for the fourth time, I received an automated phone call from – MCI – asking about my customer service experience.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know which customer service agent I should ‘grade’, because, I’d already spoken to seven of them!

On a brighter note – I’m looking for a new riding lawn mower.  I had two older lawn mowers, and I sold them last fall at a yard sale.  The grass has just started to green and I need to make a purchase, soon.  It would have been great to have purchased a mower at the end of last summer, when prices were lower, but, I wasn’t ready to buy then.  I love spring-time and I can’t wait to get in the yard and spruce things up.

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New Long Distance Plan And A New Riding Lawn Mower