Medicare Supplement billing problem

[RogerSC]

  I've been using AARP/UHC Medicare Supplement Plan F for 12 years with no problems. This year we switched to Plan G, but that's not why I'm writing this. I've been paying for both my wife and I for several years now, since my wife joined up, and that's been working fine. However, since AARP/UHC switched their billing to separate accounts for my wife and I things have really fallen apart.

Since May, when the separate accounts were started, I've been paying my premiums every month, faithfully, and on time. Every month, AARP/UHC has been shuffling a random part of the premium that I pay over to my wife's account. So I've never been in a position where I owe $0 and show $0 due for the next month. Which is what should be happening every month. Right at the moment, they have me a $0 for August (that was a battle, took several phone calls), and owing $168 for September after I made my full September premium payment. I keep calling AARP/UHC customer service to get this corrected, and they always say that it will be corrected going forward, and it never is. Every month they screw this up. My wife has auto-pay, and she hasn't paid a full month's premium yet since a random part of my premium is sent to her account before her auto-pay kicks in a the first of the month.

It has been several months now, and this is not being corrected. It is so frustrating, stressful, and depressing. I'm just waiting for them to cancel my insurance for inadequate payments. I even tried sending extra money at one point, the amount that they said I was in arrears, and that didn't work. They sent a random part of that payment to my wife's account, so I was still owing even after paying extra. I realize now that I shouldn't have done that, there really was no point, but I keep getting told that they're fixing it "for sure" going forward. Nope.

The only way that I can make this work is if I take the option to pay both of our accounts. But neither one of us wants to do that, we want the separate accounts to work. I've never run across such an incompetent business before, where the billing system is just broken month after month. I'm starting to feel that legal action is my only recourse, since I'm paying premiums that aren't being credited to my account (fraud) but I really don't want to go there. I just want this to work.

Has anyone else experienced this? And has anyone who has experienced it gotten their payments properly credited? Or is this just too broken, and we should be looking elsewhere for our Medicare Supplement insurance? I'm really at my wits end on this one...health insurance is really important to me, we pay a lot for it, and I don't want to lose it.

[TRL1111]

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@RogerSC wrote:

The only way that I can make this work is if I take the option to pay both of our accounts. But neither one of us wants to do that, we want the separate accounts to work. 

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Similar for me.  The household had one person with an AARP membership and a supplement.  And another person who was turning 65 and getting a supplement.  Wanted to use the one AARP membership for both supplements and get the household discount, but didn't want to pay the two premiums out of the same bank account.

I was told it was impossible to do that.  So I got another AARP membership for the turning-65 person, and bought their supplement using that membership.  And there's no household discount.

Worse, the two people have the same street address but different p.o. boxes, and AARP got those confused and Person A has certain mail that gets sent to Person B's p.o. box.  I've given up trying to fix it.

[marielg]

Yes, I too am experiencing billing issues similar to yours. It is extremely frustrating dealing with this and you said incompetent practice is an understatement. 

[RogerSC · Accepted solution]

OP here. Finally got this payment problem taken care of at the last possible moment before I switched away from AARP/UHC. Turns out that everywhere you see your "account number" it has a dash near the end. The account number that I see is "...-11", my wife's is "...-12". Well, apparently the software that parses these account numbers is broken and stops at the dash character. Once I removed the dash while keeping the "11" on the end of my account number, the software suddenly discovered my separate account.

I could ask several questions about this, like why did it take them a half year of my frustration to tell me that the dash in my account number was causing a problem? And who designs software that can't parse the format of the account numbers that they publish everywhere? Just ignore the dash, for heavens sake, so easy. I've never seen my account number without the dash character on the web site or in anything I've been sent.

The upside is that this is finally working...my December premium payment went wholly to my separate account, as it should. I don't know whether this will help anyone else, but I'm sure glad to see my payments going where they should go. I just have to marvel at the inefficiency of all of this, causing 6 months of customer frustration and stress.

[GailL1]

So your whole problem started when you switched to a different policy for each of you -  In that year, did you and your spouse have different AARP membership numbers?  Or did you have a joint membership.  

Why do you keep paying for both of the policies with one payment?  Each of you have a separate policy and a separate policy number and I assume account number.  

Just pay the bills as they indicate - separate payments.  You are creating problems for yourself if you don’t.  Why do you think they can keep up with the division of the payments properly when the very billing you have received says something completely different.  They process hundreds of payments each day - automatically.  

If I have misunderstood your many post on this problem - sorry - but it seems there is a simple solution once the past payments have been straighten out.

[RogerSC]

Yes Gail, you've misunderstood the problem. That's what we're trying to do, each pay separately for our separate accounts. However, AARP/UHC insists on splitting the payments that I send in to pay my account between my account and my wife's account.

So yes, we are making separate payments to our separate accounts using our separate account numbers. AARP/UHC will not stop splitting my payment to my account between my account and my wife's account. That's the problem.

It's just broken.

[marielg]

Same here. The system is beyond broken😟

[GailL1]

Yes, a real mess and it seems nobody at UHC that can help you, at least for the long term since it seems to happen over and over after you think it might have been fixed.

I just bet it has something to do with a joint AARP membership when you 1st went to Plan G - and/or the declining discount you may also get - maybe one of you at least.   

Sorry I could not help - Good Luck - let us know what happens.

[chaiwallah]

The same thing has happened to my spouse.  For almost a year we have been calling, sending bank proof of payment via certified letter.  A few weeks ago a customer service rep said it was all ok.  Also three months ago, we went to the United Health Care site and setup paying directly from our bank account.  Every payment has been processed.  We just got a cancellation notice and the account was deleted from the UHC online account page..  It’s unconscionable and it looks like we may have to hire an attorney. 

[RogerSC]

Original poster here. I was going to give AARP/UHC until the month of November to straighten things out. Well, they've just blown it again. Until today, I had $0 owed, and the next payment due was my premium. Perfect. So I paid my account premium for November, and they AGAIN split it into two payments, one to go to my wife's separate account I assume, and one applied to my account. So having paid my full November premium, AARP/UHC's records of my payments shows that I still owe for November.

I've had it. It's clear to me that this will never be fixed, I'll have to deal with it every month for as long as I'm with AARP/UHC. So I'm officially shopping for another place to get my Plan G Medicare Supplement during the current open enrollment. I'm done with calling into customer support to get this straightened out every month.

It's really too bad that these guys can't do what I'm paying them to do without my having to intervene every month, but I'm done. 6 months of this incompetence and refusal/inability to fix a simple billing problem is just too much for me.

Bye-bye.

[RogerSC]

Every time that things look good for a week or so, and I submit the next month's payment, some part of my new premium is shifted over to my wife. So I can never owe $0 for the coming month, even though I've paid my premium in full, regularly. Looking at my "Processed Payments", the premium payment that I send in is always broken up into pieces, which is not what a customer wants to see. I want to see my full premium as a single payment, credited to my account. Hasn't happened since May.

Same thing for October, I sent in my premium in plenty of time, and they again split it into two parts. One part was credited to me, and the other to my wife. This has been going on since May, and I'm really tired of having to call at least once a month, often several times in a month to get hold of someone that can get it fixed for the current month.

While I really don't want to, Medicare Open Enrollment is coming up, and I'll be looking for other providers with good reputations. Don't know if I'll switch, maybe I'll wait and see what happens for November. But I've been saying that for months.Got to say that I've pretty much given up on AARP/UHC. Every other company I've dealt with that has had billing problems has fixed it immediately, and the problem doesn't happen again. My feeling at this point is that they are just incompetent. The programmer that wrote their accounting software must have left, and they don't have anyone now that can actually fix things.

Anyways, I'm sick and tired of having to deal with this. Apologies from customer service month after month only goes so far. I'm about at the end of my patience.

[RogerSC]

They're finally moving in the right direction on our accounts, after more than 4 months of terrible accounting. I now owe $0, and have a credit for the amount that I overpaid to try to get back to $0 owing. They haven't yet figured out what my payment for next month will be, but that is "TBA". This is the result of many calls by my wife and I to UHC to get this corrected. On the most recent call, the manager that we dealt with finally "expedited" the process. That's resulted in the first progress towards sanity on our accounts.

My wife's account is about as messed up as mine. The money that they've been pushing over to her account from mine (separate accounts, eh?) is having to be back-billed now, so she's got some catchup to do. They haven't quite figured that one out yet, but they're going in that direction with a larger premium due today (9/1/2024) than her actual premium. But they have more to make up on her account before she will have paid her premiums fully.

Got to say that I've been very unhappy with AARP/UHC for the last few months. I've been with them for 12 years, and they've been fine, so I'm reluctant to leave. But I have been shopping around to see if I can find a company in our area with a better reputation to switch to. If AARP/UHC manages to get this all straightened out, we'll stick around. If not, it's just been too stressful and frustrating, we'll take our business elsewhere.

[LawrenceE659585]

 I have been having the exact same problem since May when their new service went into effect.  I've made five calls and eventually got it adjusted for that particular month but had same problem next month.  They are aware of the problem on some accounts, but just can't seem to get it fixed.

 I called again last week and spoke to a supervisor and told him that if this continues, we will look for a different Medicare Supplement provider.  He apologized and said he would take care of the adjustment.  I just checked today and the $76.04 was credited to my account from my wife's account, but I now have a $41.08 credit on my account and my wife now is $41.08 short on her September premium.  REALLY!!!

I've been paying using Bank of America scheduled Electronic Funds Transfers.  A friend of mine is having UnitedHealthcare do the EFTs from their end and hasn't had a problem, but I'm concerned that UnitedHealthcare will screw that up even more.

Anyone having UnitedHealthcare initiate the EFT having this type of problem?

[chaiwallah]

Yes we are. A horrific stressful lack of competence and reliability.

[HarrietS324128]

We have also been dealing with the same issues.  My husband’s account was credited for several months payments while mine kept getting billed.  Have made many many calls to  customer  service and been assured each time that things would be fixed.  But nothing done and at one point i was informed that my account was cancelled.  Think we will just wait for next bill and call again after it arrives……as far as we are concerned we are each paid thru October Burt dont know how the billing dept will handle things…all very frustrating.

Harriet