My mother just received a long winded letter from Cigna Retirement Investment services. No name was signed at the bottom of the letter only Defined Benefit Services.

This letter comes every year to acknowledge her tax status on her pension monthly payment. There has never been such a long winded letter before.

The message in this long winded literary piece was basically they are y2k ready!!!! However, in the second from the last paragraph they state, "We expect that our lines will be very busy due the the larger than normal volume of calls at our Service Center. We would also like to remind you that our normal policy is to begin replacing delayed or lost payments on the 5th business day of the month. Therefore we ask you that you not call until January 7th to call regarding a replacement payment".

This message was never contained in previous letters. The instruction s in the past was to mail or call in for changes in tax status that is whether you wanted them to withhold tax or not or make any changes.

I would expect the large volume of calls they are expecting has something to do with the checks not forthcoming at all. They dont want all these little ole ladies and men to panic. Iam sure when you do call they will have some made up story as to what fatality occured like our check preparers have the flu or something like that. The spin will never end. Boy do they think we are stupid? I did go to their site and let them know I know different and they had better admit when I call that they were not compliant from the gitgo and like every other corporation and government agency its a fix on failure.

-- Susan Barrett (sue59@bellsouth.net), December 20, 1999