Phone call win

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Phone calls are the worst for me. I wish they weren't but they are. I overthink the conversation and what I am requesting.

I had to make a phone call to the local hospital about a statement that I already paid for. I assumed that it was just another one sent out since I did pay that bill one day later than the due date. ((I had gotten the dates confused)). So I was persuaded by the bf to call them since it could've been a mistake on their end and try to get me to pay for it again.

I called the number on the bill and the conversation went well. After verifying my information, the woman I spoke with was polite and said since I paid a day late and online, it takes about 3 days for their system to have the bill marked as paid. It only took two minutes.

Now I am going to try and get a hair appointment set up. My hair has gotten way too long. The confidence is coursing through my veins!

Wanting to see more examples like this gives me some urge to try something new.

I'm glad the phone call worked well for you. When I make a call, I get asked to repeat myself 5 times and I give up and hang up.

Well done.

I never used to be afraid of phone calls until businesses and government departments started to get so awkward. Back in the day, you'd get more or less straight through to a real person who would usually listen and behave reasonably well. But now it's very often telephone menus and long waits before anything potentially useful happens, and even if / when you finally get to talk to a human, it's as if they've been trained to fob you off with nothing. Still, some customer services aren't that bad.

If it's something like a bill payment where they've sent me a demand because the system has been too slow to notice I've paid it, I usually ignore it, as long as I'm sure the money went out to the right place. If they're silly enough to attack me when I can prove I've paid it, bring it on. But the rules of service providers and the law can be strange things, so it's probably wise to be on the safe side and make sure a reply to their out-of-date demand is in the paper trail. It doesn't have to be a phone call, and if there's an email or messaging option then I'd usually take that route. It's often quicker and easier than phoning them, and personally I'm stronger with the written word than I am with the spoken word. With emails, it's also easier to keep a copy of what I told them, and it might look better than just claiming that I said this or that on the phone. It's nearly always safe as long as you can show that you did all you reasonably could to resolve the problem.

When I do decide to phone a service provider, naturally I worry because I've known it to get me nowhere, but I prop myself up by figuring out what I want to say, and whittling it down to the clearest, shortest thing possible. I also try to remind myself that if it goes wrong, I can always try again, and the chances are that a different person will then answer, and they might be less of a butt. At any rate I'll know what tricks the first person used to fob me off, so I won't be taken by surprise. I also keep pen and paper to hand so I can make a record of what happened. That way, if they're awkward, I can explain how I made reasonable attempts to put things right, and how they made it impossible by having a useless customer services system.

If they don't play ball, it also does no harm to mention that you have a cognitive disability, at least if you can prove it on demand. They might ignore it, but I think it scares a lot of them because discrimination law can have quite a lot of clout.

PS I wouldn't be so gung-ho about ignoring bill payment demands if I was worried about my credit history. I have no plans to borrow money, but a lot of people do.

[quote="blitzkrieg"][/quote]

Nope, and even if you are covered, you still are at the whims of the insurance company.