When Autopay Doesn’t

Fun fact: If you ever find yourself on hold with Anthem Blue Cross customer support, the background music will unexpectedly disappear after 30 minutes. Exactly 30 minutes. Of course, you never want to be on hold with customer support for that long, but if you are, now you know not to be alarmed when the music disappears. I had called the number on the back of my insurance card in hopes of making a policy payment after my monthly autopay didn’t seem to have gone through. So I was puttering around the house, my phone on speaker, trying to get a little work done, because it seemed like this problem was going to take awhile to fix. I was in the middle of shoveling items from the cat’s litter box when the hold music vanished.

“Oh dear!” I actually said out loud, to nobody, as it turns out.

I wondered if I had offended the gods of customer support by propping my phone next to the cat box while I dug for treasure there.

I hoped I hadn’t been disconnected, as it is a hellish process to work your way through the Anthem phone menu to get to the place where you can actually speak to a real person. After you call the main number, they give you nearly infinite options to hang up so you don’t bother them. “Press one and we will send you a link so you can text us,” they say. Or “Download our app and we will help you that way!”

Except I had tried both those in the past, and they were actually not so helpful.

So I continued to wait, even though the silence was slightly disconcerting. About 40 minutes in, the customer support representative returned (hallelujah!) and said that he was checking his “sources” and would need more time. He apologized and was polite. He also dropped the unwelcome (and as it turns out, incorrect) news that the reason I was having trouble with my health insurance payment was that the policy had been cancelled.

As the hour mark approached, I was more than a little irritated and also worried, so I logged into my account on my computer to chat with an online representative. Which, as you know, was something I had wanted to avoid, because the last time I tried to fix a problem that way, that interaction also took about an hour. Surely phone support would be quicker!

It was not.

The online representative assured me that my policy was not cancelled, but I did need to make a payment. I took a screenshot of that wonderful news, just in case I need it later. Unfortunately, because I had signed up for autopay (which somehow did not autopay), she said I would have to make that payment by calling the main customer support number.

Oh bother.

Because you know how much fun (and quick) that process is.

The online chat representative disappeared about the time that the phone representative returned. He said that I could not make a payment yet, that he was looking into the problem, that he would contact me Monday or Tuesday and that I would be able to make my April payment then.

I expressed concern that I might not be able to get to my phone at the exact time on Monday or Tuesday when he would have the problem fixed, because of work and who knows how long that conversation would take? He understood and gave me a code (something like I-C-202-07897) that I will need to recite to the next unfortunate customer support person who picks up the line when I call. That code should explain to them all the ins and outs of my situation and will allow me to finally, finally make that April payment, which was supposed to be paid on autopay but wasn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to go back to writing and mailing checks for some of these monthly bills. Not something I’m wanting to do just yet, but a good reminder that online systems are not perfect and that we need to be alert and aware and not lulled into a false sense of security, assuming that things are being handled the right way. If you have bills set to autopay, check to make sure that they are getting paid. I failed to do this a few months back, which set off this series of unfortunate events, which has led to hours on hold with customer support and a little extra anxiety.

Because there is enough stress these days without adding hours-long conversations with customer support people. You need to stay close to the phone charger in case your battery gets low and also need to stay in the house where the cell signal is strongest. And then the hold music disappears and you don’t even know for sure that your call is still connected! Best to avoid all that. But also? I’m grateful that I realized there was a problem early enough to get it fixed, even if it took a few hours when I would have rather been outside enjoying a beautiful spring day.