No fair!
Don’t you hate it when people become reasonable just when you have come up with an awesome way of dealing with them?
I have an example. My wife recently went to visit the doctor. While doing the whole checkup thing, he gave her a brief thirty second lecture on getting more exercise and eating better. Pretty much what happens with most people when they visit a doctor.
Well it turns out that he didn‘t think that this was part of the regular doctor visit. He thought that the brief lecture on a healthy lifestyle was far above and beyond normal doctor behavior. So much so, that he charged extra for it.
I’ll repeat that real fast in case it didn’t sink in properly.
He charged my wife extra, on top of what she paid for a checkup, because he gave a brief lecture on healthy lifestyle.
He felt that this exceptional service was worth forty-five dollars. I know doctor’s services are valuable, but that’s more than a dollar a second. It’s not like my wife asked “Could you throw in an extra lecture for me this time?”
We were a bit surprised to receive a second bill for what we believed to be a normal doctors visit. My wife called the office to complain, and I wrote a letter.
Dear My Wife’s Doctor,
I understand that you charged us an extra $45 dollars for the brief discussion of the importance of nutrition and exercise. Even though every single doctor in the U.S. gives that speech at every visit, you saw fit to charge an extra fee for it.
Well fair enough, you do deserve to be compensated for your time and effort. However I have a suggestion. In the future, maybe, just maybe, if you stop trying to attach extra fees to the bill in the hope that people will pay them without question; you will probably get more return patients. With a steady flow of return patients you will have more regular income and will not need to rely upon cheap tricks with your billing department to make ends meet.
Enclosed you will find my bill for “Business Advice” set at the very reasonable rate of $90 dollars. Please pay at your earliest convenience.
But no, before I could send the letter, the doctor’s office went and apologized and canceled the bill.
Inconsiderate bastards.
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December 2nd, 2007 at 10:09 pm
How dare they do something so selfish as to cancel the unreasonable charge when you had taken the time to write such a politely worded letter? You should bill them for the labor time it took to write that letter! That’ll show em! *g*
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December 3rd, 2007 at 5:18 am
just when you thought the american healthcare system couldn’t get any MORE out of control. i kinda thought that’s why you went to the doctor’s in the first place: to get advice on your health. as an aircaft mechanic that’d be kinda like me saying “well i fixed the problem, oh wait you wanted the screws put back in too? that’ll be extra.”
glad they finally came to their senses
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December 3rd, 2007 at 6:33 am
Good that they came to their senses, bad that you never got to send that letter. Bet the reaction would’ve been AWESOME.
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December 3rd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
You should still send the letter but add, “I understand you made an error in judgement and have retracted the bill, but the fact that I was originally billed still remains, therefore…” That wasy they see why you were upset about it to begin with and could get that $90!!
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December 4th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Wow. Just…wow. Common sense has horrible timing, apparently.
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December 10th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Yeah… it really sucks how people only become reasonable when you really feel like venting at someone or you just work out an excellent way to tell them that they’re being unreasonable.
Believe me, you’re not alone there.
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December 12th, 2007 at 5:02 am
OH MY GOD YOU’RE MARRIED???!!??
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December 25th, 2007 at 5:18 am
Yeah, it means even you have a chance. :D
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February 6th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
HA! The same thing happened to me recently! I had a big arguement with my bank about some convenience fines they stuck into my account for … well… For my convenience.
I am a communications major. That is to say a film student.
I had a web video planned which I suspect would even make Skippy smile.
Don’t fuck with a communications major if you have a reputation to maintain.
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January 26th, 2011 at 10:22 pm
I think this qualifies as a case of experiencing mixed emotions. This reminds me of the ending to an episode of The Mentalist, where the crime is solved but Teresa Lisbon and Patrick Jane do not feel the peace of mind that they should (or something like that). They still need to blow off some steam, so Patrick says something like, “Want to go to the shooting range?” and Teresa says, “I’ll drive.”
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January 26th, 2011 at 10:27 pm
The best thing to do is simply count to ten and take a deep breath. In some way or another, you got your feelings out on paper, which is an effective coping mechanism that I once or twice learned about. (It ends with you destroying the piece of paper you wrote it on, for some reason.)
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