Automated Annoyance

This weekend I logged in to pay for my dental insurance. I waited until close to the last day because I have a new provider that is supposed to start, but since I haven’t received the new ID card, I figured it was better to have 2 plans for a month over not having any for a month. Plus in the grand scheme of things it isn’t expensive. Once logged in, the first screen showed the balance expected for the next month so I clicked the payment button. The payment screen showed I owed nothing. Since I’m pretty sure I hadn’t paid for February yet and know the amount I clicked the other amount option and tried to enter the normal amount. It didn’t work. I logged out and back in and tried again. It still didn’t work.

Since I waited until so close to the due date to make the payment I figured I had to call to make the payment. Begrudgingly I called and got the automated system. It greeted me, asked me some questions to identify my account, then transferred me. The transfer part answered and greeted me again, asked me the same questions to identify my account, then gave me options for what I needed. None of the options fit so I said other. It didn’t like that answer so it repeated the options and I said representative. It told me it would love to transfer me to a representative, but first needed more information about what I was calling about and repeated the same options that I didn’t need. I said other again and it told me it was transferring me to the next available representative. I was on hold for a little bit then got a message saying they were closed, stated the hours they were open and promptly hung up on me.

That was it. Five minutes wasted to get hung up on by a machine without accomplishing anything. In this case the provider was Humana, but reality is it probably wouldn’t have been much different for any service I was calling.

Update – I logged back in on February 1st and both screens showed I owed the expected amount and it let me pay it.