Poetic Tongues/Fabu
With A Little Help from New-Found Friends
My lived experiences as a Black woman in Madison are getting more burdensome than I’d like and more difficult than I want them to be. Maybe some of you have seen me on television news lately, in the newspapers and read discussions in my columns. For the past two years, I have encountered more incidents of unkindness, unprofessionalism and extremely poor customer service compacted in a shorter amount of time, than is usual for me. We all have examples of people not choosing to be kind, and interactions with businesses and organizations that are not professional.
Some surmised this increase is due to the COVID Pandemic. Due to COVID, for three years, we ceased to communicate well with each other in both personal and business matters. Many are still working completely from home and one communicates differently when it is not face-to-face. Also others of us are working a hybrid schedule, so the need for clarity, while a priority, doesn’t happen as often as it should.
I define myself as an introvert who really likes people. I am an introspective person, shy as a child and teenager, who learned to have great respect for all people from the youngest to the elders. This works well for me as a poet. I have also been fortunate and blessed to work, over a long career, with children, families and now elders. I am still a private person, so the difficulties I recently experienced with businesses, organizations and people, mean that I had to expose my life and specifically my health information, more than I would have wanted to share. For example, I had a problem with ADT security services overcharging me for services they didn’t provide, I talked to them with no response. I emailed SOS with Chris Rickert and the matter was solved with his intervention. My appreciation to Chris and SOS. I know how to ask for help after I try to solve the problem first.
I am experiencing the greatest problem with my health savings account paying for legitimate medical services. I struggled for two years, trying to figure out how to send the exact receipt they required, without the organization’s assistance or my health insurance’s help. I sent so many emails, made so many phone calls, to no avail. Out of desperation, and after the HSA made me pay twice for the same service by removing over $1,000 out of my salary during the second year, I contacted Call for Action with Channel 3000, who have volunteers that assist with consumer complaints.
Call for Action volunteer Michelle, was extremely helpful in working with me for over a year and most importantly verifying the accuracy of what was wrongly happening to me. At first, it was just my word against Optum Financial who operate my HSA, and their refusal to accept the receipts I kept sending in a variety of ways, but Michelle and I were working together and getting the same messages. This column is to thank her publicly and Call for Action for their support and news report that exposed what happened to me. Now Optum Financial has the right receipts, but still refuses to refund my money wrongly removed from my salary, so Michelle and I are still working to recover that.
Years ago, I told my son when he was a teenager that when you stand up for what is right, you have already won. Your willingness to know right from wrong and to be on the side of right is the victory, no matter what else happens. I believe the same for the problems I continue to have with Optum Financial. I only want Optum Financial to be professional, and offer basic, good customer service. I also want readers to persevere when there is injustice and to ask for help.
