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Customer Asks For Itemized Bill, Verizon Tells Her To Get a Subpoena
suraj.sun writes with this quote from an article at Techdirt:
"A woman, who called Verizon to try to find out about the $4.19 she was being charged for six local calls, was told by Verizon reps that the only way it would provide her an itemized bill was to get a lawyer and have the lawyer get a subpoena to force Verizon to disclose the information. Instead, the woman went to court (by herself) and a judge told Verizon (.docx) to hand over the itemized bill info. 'It is a basic matter of fair business practice that a consumer should be able to contact a utility about a charge on a bill and learn what the charge is for and learn that the charge was correctly applied. The only verification that Verizon's witness could offer that a charge like [the customer's] $4.19 measured use charge was accurate and billed correctly was her faith in the accuracy of Verizon's computer system. The only way that Verizon would offer any information about a past charge in response to a consumer inquiry was to require that customer to hire a lawyer and subpoena their own usage information. By no reasonable standard could this be considered reasonable customer service."
All medical care is ultimately paid for. The parent is probably in the "rural country" that's about to go belly-up from the trillions of dollars in foreign aid it subsidizes smug a-holes like you to the tune of.
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I like how the insurance company says - x charge for a procedure. Then the hospital instead of submitting one charge, submits bills from each physician, doctor separately.
Room bill procedure bill anesthesia bill surgeon bill etc bill etc2 bill etc3 bill etc etc etc bill
each one with it's own co-pay of coure.
I called the insurance company up, re-played the call when I got the authorization with one fee. I only paid one fee, they had to cover the rest, and they sued the hospital for illegal charge breakup - ie - insurance fraud.
Typical american. Not only are you against having government participate in a positive manner in your life, but you'd like to increase the number of lawyers, drive up the cost of doing business, and encourage the insurance companies to continue to profiteer in your name.
Look at other countries with successful, non-failing economies. Canada is a good example. They're even on the same continent. The big difference? The metric system... and the government.