Has anyone been experiencing any difficulty with Nationwide Insurance company billing? How about ATT? Here is what has been happening with me and my son. For the past 2 months Nationwide has sent me "unexplained" billing memos. Allow me to clarify, policies rollover on a yearly basis if home/auto combo. As an agent myself I knew we would see problems come 1-1-99 but I didnt believe it would be soooo soon. I called my n.w. agent to ask about whay the mix up with the bill on my auto portion. He doesnt know, he called company las month. Again this month same thing. Agent is exhausted said that this is happening ALOT lately. He gives me the numbe rot call the company myself (highly unusual as agents are "in charge" ) but I took the number and called myself. It seems the CSR at N.Wide couldnt even explain this to me. Said things on there that shouldnt be. I believe what may be happening is the "testing" is in place and glitches are occuring. Be careful with bills, make sure they are correct. I cannot do so, the company cant, now what? I dont know. She stated the company is sending out renewal bills based on last years premium amount, but I have had endorsement on my policy which lowered premium. It cant be fixed she said. I have to wait, pay what they want even if it isnt correct and wait.?????

ATT: Sent my son a bill. Last month was 56.00 this month he received a duplicate of last months bill with 560.00 at the bottom of bill. I cant wait to see what they say about that tommorrow.

My question, IS anyone else experiencing billing problems with insurance yet? How about any other bills? Great forum lets discuss?

-- consumer alert (private@aol.com), October 21, 1998

Answers

Actually, if indeed businesses really are trying to fix their Y2K problems, then new bugs introduced in the process of trying to fix the old ones are certainly quite possible. Just a thought....

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), October 22, 1998.

If this is happening then the general public may become aware sooner than many think. Definitely something to keep an eye on. Closely scrutinizing all bills would be prudent at this point.

-- Buddy Y. (DC) (buddy@bellatlantic.net), October 22, 1998.

Thanks for the "heads up".

I don't use NIS but I do use ATT. I kinda thought that I had until this coming January to start the watch. So far I haven't seen any oops, but I really wasn't paying close attention either.

I guess between Bug checks and the "Forecast Effect" we are starting to see the bouncing ball a little earlier.

Thanks again.

Check your 6.

S.O.B.

-- sweetolebob (La) (buffgun@hotmail.com), October 22, 1998.

Roger that on ATT. They STILL haven't straightened out our bill. Missed billing, then double billing. This tells me that they've got to production with some less-than-well-tested fixes. Someone (cory hamasaki, I think) calls this the "Bozo the Quality Clown" approach: slam those fixes out there and we'll live with the results! Idiots...

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), October 22, 1998.

It's called "live" testing....been there, been done to it, been d**m near done in by it.

The programmer proabably issued a module that required a submodule (or subordinate program) to function. The first module had to get to released (to let "something" critical get done - pretend it was printing the bills The "baby" module (reducing back charges) wasn't done as often, so it wasn't completed since prinint bills is more important).

So the first programmer had to issue "dummy" coding switches in the "baby" module to get the parent to work.

Either he forgot to re-fix the baby module, or didn't have time yet, or lost the "fix" in the shuffle. So you're left with the bag.

Write them, complain (to the president's office), tell him you are going to change insurance companies if he can't control his software versions any better this.

Now is the time to get your message heard and kick corporate America in their collective management butts.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 23, 1998.

Thanks for all the good info. I called ATT today about my sons bill, I spoke with a rep there. What is at the bottom of the bill is a CREDIT for the 500+ dollars....!!!! Rep states, "I see no credit,just amount due of 56.80 (credit @ bottom is 560.80) She places me on hold and after awhile returns BEGGING me to fax here that bill. I shall see what is up. This is insanity at its finest. Sure hope they do my mortgage payment this way, lol. As for Nationwide Insurance Company, they have returned my call, but to date do Not know what is wrong there.

-- consumer alert (privat@aol.com), October 23, 1998.

Two companies I've worked for had extremely complicated billing programs, usually one huge great program with 50 modules. At one site they were going to rewrite the entire billing process they changed their minds and left out the actual billing program itself, no-one could understand all the ins and outs. They were not confident in duplicating and improving the old code. At the other site programmers actually refused to make changes (to the billing prog.), apart from date changes which were required each year! All of the companies income depended on incredibly badly written code. Billing seems to be a process that starts off quite simple until all the possible exceptions are built in over the months/years. Then it becomes too difficult to understand.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), October 23, 1998.