Let me explain.  No, let me sum up.  In 2001, when Tammy and I were making our way from Los Angeles to Anchorage via the Cassiar Highway in western British Columbia, we had the good fortune of driving through lovely Prince George.  We stopped and bought some groceries because it is the largest place you see until you actually get to Anchorage some thousands of miles later.   After paying for a pile of produce and canned goods at the register, the clerk asked if I wanted a bag.  We sort of stared at the pile of groceries and then looked back up at her, blankly.  Uh…yes?  Yes.  Yes!  I would love a bag, or actually several bags.  Her comeback?  Wait for it…  “How many?”  At this point I was realizing something funny was going on here.  I know my grocery store social pragmatics and this was in direct, clear violation.  “Um…as many as it takes?”  So they bagged them up, and then she punched some numbers on the register and charged me $.05 or $.10 per bag (ok, I don’t remember the amount per bag, give me a break and listen to the story!).  AAAHH, the light at last came on.

So back to saving earth.  These people think you can do it with cloth bags.

http://www.igotmybag.org/links.htm

Now, I have no problem with this philosophy, in fact I find it eminently sensible.  It just reminded me of that story so I had to share it.

The Irish are apparently completely on board as well:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/world/europe/02bags.html

*****1/25/12 update – HMMM.  Just found this in the “drafts” section of the blog, meaning it never was “published.”  OK, let’s try this again.

“Good day today. 11 hours of sleep last night (!!), and a good day of work here in Chevak interrupted by a phone call from my 2-year old son telling me that “Bobo Potty!” He was home sick today with Tammy. Apparently he wandered into the bathroom on his own during “Toy Story” saying “Bobo potty,” and came out a while later naked from the waist down and with a potty full of pee! Go Bobo Go!”

So the ‘ol blog is left with only the serious stuff, aka whining and complaining.  : – )  Hmmm, perhaps I’m ok with this.  Which might mean I crank out 19 dark dank and dour (if not despairing or depressing) posts in the next week or 2.  Or not.  Hey, I’d love to get them off my list!  Not to mention have them all “put to bed” and processed and out of my HEAD.  Lest you forget, this blog is for me, not you.  Shoot there I go talking to myself again.  ; – )  Anyway us extroverts have the need to PROCESS, and the process usually ain’t pretty.  This one sums it up well too if you haven’t seen it before.

So anyway, you’ve been warned.

Brace, nay, STEEL thyself for the tidal wave of bloggery.

I’ll have them all posted at this rate…in 2020 or so.

If you’ve watched baseball much, or played it at any level, you know that this is the sort of thing you don’t see beyond the t-ball level, and it’s absolutely unheard of in MLB.  I love this clip!  I can’t even explain why it pleases me so much.  : – )  Short article with a 1-minute video.  Look how when he initially gets into 3rd base he looks to home and flinches in that direction as if to run.  Almost a home run on a dribbler to the shortstop.  And at the 50 sec mark you can see him looking at the infielder placement, and way in the background the center fielder anticipates what is happening and starts sprinting in, too late.

Check out this link to an audio clip from KYUK radio.  It details how the prosecuting attorney was excluded from a recent pretrial hearing.  D.A. Stein was going to seek a delay in the trial as the state was not ready.  In addition, prosecutors were going to contest the accused’s request for a change of attorney.  Because she was kept out of the locked courtroom for 20 minutes along with media members (despite 3 verbal requests for admittance), the D.A. was unable to get any of this done and the state will have to move forward with it’s case whether it’s ready or not.  The judge apologized but said it was too late because she missed the meeting.  You can file this under “things are different here,” in a bad way.   : – (

If you haven’t heard about the case, a 19-year old kid from a coastal village was tortured to death over several days by 2 older men in Bethel while tied to a table saw.  A 3rd man who happens to work as a Bethel courthouse clerk (and who was himself the victim of torture years ago in his African homeland) SAW the victim tied down and failed to report it to anyone.  This man’s employment at the Bethel Courthouse resulted in the case being moved to Fairbanks.  Let’s hope justice is served.

Two weeks ago, we couldn’t use our usual babysitter because her son wasn’t feeling well, had a fever, and ended up being diagnosed with an ear infection.  On Friday of that week we were looking for a sitter and I called them up and they said he was better, he was fine.  I dropped our kids off and then flew off to Napaskiak with the boys for some high school basketball (I’m coaching this year).  On Monday I had to get to Atmautluak to test a student before their IEP became due.  I took them to the same sitter.  I returned home around 5 pm and my wife told me we had to pick up our kids ASAP because the sitter had called to report that our son had a fever.

I went and picked the kids up, and he didn’t look good and was fussy.  We got home and I checked his temp and it was normal.  A couple of hours later and it had climbed to 100 or 101, and we gave him some ibuprofen.  This brought it back down, but after 4 or 5 hours the fever and fussiness would return, and generally speaking each was worse than the one before.  On Wednesday morning I was planning on calling the clinic and getting him an appointment.  But when he woke up, he had no fever.  Hooray!  I thought his fever had broken.  No.  By lunch time he had a fever that was 102 or 103.  It was too late to call the clinic.  You cannot get an appointment unless you call in the morning, and they stop seeing patients in the early afternoon.

So I called at 9:00 on Thursday morning and got an appointment for 11:00 am.  I called Tammy and she said she would go with me to the clinic since I can’t drive (snowmachine or the school truck) and hold the baby at the same time.  I called our other babysitter and she agreed to take our daughter while we took our son to the clinic.  Tammy had to wait for her sub and then explain to him what she wanted done with her classes, so that when she arrived we were running late.  She hadn’t had time to have breakfast or lunch yet.  We piled all four of us onto my Polaris 550 with the sticker that reads “Not intended for use by more than two people at any time,” and drove to the babysitter’s and our count went down to three.  From there to the clinic, driving slowly because of the precious cargo, the new pistons in my snowgo (another story), and the difficulty seeing the dips and bumps and gulleys along the way.  Tammy was on a snowgo that turned over a few years ago and she has some (justifiable) fear of this happening to her while holding the baby.

A mile and a half later and we were safely ensconced within Kasigluk’s large new clinic.  We saw a health aide who gave the baby a thorough inspection.  The health aides use the “Community Health Aide Manual,” aka the “health aide bible,” to help guide their physical inspection and patient interview.  After checking temp, oxygen, ears, nose, throat, heart, lungs, etc, the health aide felt that maybe we should take Bobo in to Bethel to see a doctor.  Very quickly if you don’t know already, the community health aide is not a doctor, physician’s assistant, nurse practitioner, nor a nurse.  They are trained in some basic medical knowledge and trained to gather the data and then fax (yes I think they are still FAXing) the information to the YKHC (Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corp) hospital in Bethel, where a doctor or nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant will read the report and then respond with the course of treatment.  The clinics are stocked with the most common prescriptions.  If you want to know a lot more about the community clinics, the health aides, the physician’s assistants and others in Bethel who work with the village clinics to prescribe meds and medivac serious cases, you can check out the now defunct Tundra Medicine Dreams blog.  Lots of good writing from a P.A. who used to be on the Bethel end of the service delivery model.  The village clinics, as well as the YKHC hospital, are all a part of the vast Indian Health Service, providing free health care to nearly all of my neighbors.  YKHC serves as the primary hospital for something like 56 villages.

Back to the story.  They were concerned about Bobo’s chest and lungs, based on what they could hear in his breathing, and felt he should go to Bethel, and the doctor in Bethel agreed.  However, it was too late to get an appointment for that day.  Our options were to go and sit in the E.R., or wait to the next day and call at 8:00 AM sharp and get a same-day appointment.  The last time we tried to do this I called over and over and only got busy signals or voicemail until 8:45, at which time someone answered and said the same-day appointments were all taken.  On that occasion, Tammy then flew in with our daughter and sat in the E.R. from roughly 10 am until 4:30 pm without seeing anyone and then she gave up and caught the last plane back to Kasigluk.  Our girl got better on her own, and Tammy figured that sitting in the crowded E.R. full of very sick people was not going to help things improve. We weren’t sure what to do.  One of the health aides advised us that the E.R. gets very crowded in the evening but if you go before 5:00 or so you can usually get seen right away.  They also mentioned that a plane was coming in the next couple of minutes, and we should try and get a seat as the next plane wouldn’t come for several hours.  We had no change of clothes, not for ourselves nor for the baby.  We had 1 extra diaper.  We decided to go for it.  We wanted to do what was best for our boy.  Less than five minutes later, Tammy and Bobo got the last seat on the 6-seat Yute Air 207 for the 15 minute flight to Bethel ($88 each way!).

Upon arrival in Mamterillermun (Bethel in Yup’ik), they headed via taxi ($8) to the E.R.  She got there around 2:00 pm and it was crowded.  She saw the triage nurse who told her it would be a long wait to see a doctor, even by their standards.  But the wait for the chest x-ray would not take more than a couple of hours.  Also, she was able to schedule an appointment for a doctor the next day, so she decided to wait in the E.R. for the x-ray, then take a taxi ($8) and check in to a hotel ($170).  Tammy is not the last of the big spenders, but with airfare, hotel, taxis, 4 meals from restaurants, clothing and diapers from the store, our 40% share of the medical bills (YKHC is not a “preferred provider” with our school district health insurance despite being almost the only option for hundreds of miles, go figure)…the whole trip cost upwards of $700.  Bethel and the bush in general can be very expensive.  Small demand, but teeny tiny supply.  She also had to order food (first she’d eaten all day, around dinner time) for her and the baby, she went to a store with the baby (cab ride) and bought him a change of clothes, diapers, etc, and even bought some hand-made booties made by a woman from our village because in our haste we had taken him to the clinic in a snowsuit and pajamas but no shoes.

After a rough night during which his temp climbed as high as 104, they took a taxi to the 10:40 appointment at YKHC on Friday morning.  He was given amoxicillin for otitis media (bad ear infection) and the x-rays were examined and they were negative, no problems.  So just a flu and ear infection combination.  They headed to the airport after getting meds from the YKHC pharmacy around 12:30.  OH, and by the way while at the hospital Tammy saw people who had been in the E.R. when she arrived the day before at 2:00, they got there before her.  She asked when they were seen by a doctor, and they told her 4:00 AM!  So it would have likely been more than a 14 hour wait in the E.R. had they stayed, with almost no sleep surrounded by lots of very sick people.  I think they made the right call about getting a next day appointment and going to a hotel! At the airport they found out noone was flying due to fog and snow that kept going up and down.  To cut this part of the story mercifully shorter, they waited all day and did eventually make it home around 7:00 pm.  Yute Air told me around 4:30 that she was on the plane and on the way, so I headed over to get her using the school truck, and with Claire.  By 6:00 Claire was cold (truck has no heat) and my hands were getting seriously cold too.  These sorts of miscommunications are commonplace with the small Bethel airlines, more the rule than the exception.  I took Claire home, and found a message on the machine that she had left Bethel already, so I raced back to the airport and waited another half hour or so and then they came in (she was delayed because the plane went to another village before it reached KUK).  Hooray!!  We drove home, and though Bobo was still noticeably fussy and tired, he seemed much better already, not needing to be held every second.

This was not the happy ending we thought it was.  On Saturday morning, after giving the baby his 2nd dosage of amox, Tammy noticed his back was all splotchy.  She remembered the pharmacist telling her that if he had a rash, to stop the meds immediately because it indicates an allergic reaction that would start as an isolated rash, then move to a rash all over, then move to difficulty breathing if he stayed on the meds.  I was coaching basketball at the school and not reachable.  She called the on-call health aide (the clinic is closed on weekends but they have a clinic cell phone that is answered 24/7 for emergencies), but was told that they couldn’t see him unless it was an emergency, but we could bring him in on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday and they are closed).  He has been sick since Monday, today is a Saturday, we didn’t want to wait another 3 full days to get him on the right antibiotics.  We called the YKHC E.R. and asked how the wait was, they said it was terrible, and when told why we might bring the baby in the person said the health aide should take care of it for us.  I went and spoke with the health aide, a family friend.  She was sympathetic and nice, but it sounds like she isn’t really allowed to intervene after hours except for real emergencies.  I explained that I’m concerned about the ear drum rupturing, and the high fevers returning, and he has been sick long enough, he hasn’t been eating hardly any solids for several days, etc.  She said that sometimes they will drain (through a perforated eardrum) even after getting on antibiotics, and said “If it drains then it’s meant to drain.” She wasn’t very concerned.  I don’t say all of this as a criticism.  The health aides do a really good job.  They have saved our bacon more than once, even once when Tammy broke her leg and they helped get her on a plane in a snowstorm.  But the healthcare is not what you can get in most of America after a short car ride.  You may have to wait until Tuesday.  Or you may have to pay to get on a plane, and then a cab.  And then wait a long, long time.  I think the Indian Health Service gets away with it because (1) hey, it’s “free” healthcare (in exchange for natives giving up land claims and other claims against the State) and (2) Yup’iks don’t complain.  It is not a Yup’ik value to complain, or be verbally assertive, aggressive, or pushy, or to call their congressman.  Things simply are accepted that would be “unacceptable” in suburban, white America.  And that gets taken advantage of sometimes by the kassaq institutions out here.

These sorts of interactions between cultures can be pretty fascinating, and its the kind of interesting interplay you can get a lot of on the aforementioned old Tundra Medicine Dreams blog.  My neighbors accept suffering with a lot of patience and stoicism.  Some outsiders might even say fatalism.  As a speech-language pathologist (SLP) I deal with kids with speech (articulation) and language delays all the time.  And I know that kids with recurrent otitis media and perforated eardrums are far, far more at risk for delays, and even behavior problems, than kids with healthy ears.  I also know from my dealings with audiologists in this region, that they all say that they’ve never, ever seen ear problems like we have out here, in terms of severity but mostly in terms of rates of incidence.  It is very common for kids here to go to ANMC in Anchorage for ear surgery to repair perforated eardrums.  When I say very common, I don’t have a percentage, but maybe 10% of all kids?  Maybe more?  These are kids who have grown enough to have the surgery.  You can’t have it as a  young child because your eardrum is still growing and the repair may not work.  So they live several or many years with the hole before it is patched, meaning they go through a lot of developmental years without proper hearing.  So needless to say, this is one cheechako/kassaq/dad who does not believe that my kid’s ears are meant to drain.  Us kassaqs are arrogant enough to think we can control such things.

I flew in to Bethel with Bobo on the last plane before the ceiling (poor visibility) came down on Saturday, just an hour or two after the visiting basketball teams had flown home.  Our friend Deanna drove us over on our snowmachine because the truck wouldn’t start (it is below zero today and it’s not plugged in) and Tammy (a) doesn’t know how to drive the snowgo and (b) needed to watch Claire.  We actually strongly considered flying on to Anchorage, because it is possible to get a mileage ticket that will fly us from kasigluk to Bethel to Anchorage, and it costs no money and only 15,000 miles.  Remember that Tammy just spent several hundred dollars on Thursday and Friday.  It can actually be a lot cheaper for us to get on a jet and fly 400 miles to Anchorage where we have our own car, friends to stay with, and medical that is covered at 90%.  Crazy.  But the ERA flights from BET-ANC were done for the day, and I didn’t want to spend 3 hours in the terminal waiting for the 8:30 Alaska Air jet with Bobo so I decided to stay elsewhere in Bethel, after calling the E.R. and being told they were “slammed.”  The guy said it has been that way for 2 weeks since the flu has been going around. I figured its better to get a good night’s sleep and go in at 5 or 6 am in hopes that we don’t have to endure the 14+ hour long wait.  Hopefully we can make it home by the Sunday evening flight, with antibiotics in hand that fix my son’s ears but don’t give him an allergic reaction.  I am sure he is even more tired of this whole process than his parents!

Living and teaching where we do is such a unique experience in almost every way from the “norms” of our majority culture.  And there are tons of things we love about village life.  Other aspects are difficult.  It’s different out here, for better and for worse.  I need to remember that we are richly blessed to be able to hop on planes and get the help we need.  It was not at all this way in Kasigluk when I was Bobo’s age.

Hello.  My family is planning our first trip to Europe.  We are Alaska residents, and the only airline that flies direct from Alaska to Europe is Condor, flying from Anchorage to Frankfurt seasonally.  After several hours of research using different dates (and comparing paying $$ to fly via lower 48 vs miles vs paying $$ to fly Condor direct), I determined the best deal was to fly Condor leaving ANC on 7/4 to FRA, returning on 7/20.  Travelocity had a quoted average price of $722 per person based on 2 adults and a reduced child fare (4-year old).

When I went to buy the ticket, every time on the FINAL screen after I put in credit card information it would say something to the effect of “sorry, one or more of your flights has sold out.”  This happened several times over a few different days, and finally I called you about a week ago (late January?).  The person listened and said if we had the same problem by phone he could waive the booking fee of $25 per person.

We went through all the same steps for the same flights and then he had the same problem.  He said it must have just sold out and if we wait 30 to 60 minutes the system would update itself and it would no longer be available on the website.  However, it had been giving me that error message for several days already at that point.  I waited several hours and then tried again and the flight was still available.  I tried again and got the same message.   I finally decided to fly on different dates even though they were more expensive just so we could get the tickets because my parents needed to know when we would be there.  After a few more hours of research, I settled on 6/29 to 7/15, again ANC-FRA.  Same problem happened at the end.  So I tried several other dates like 7/6 to 720, 7/8 to 7/22, 7/1 to 7/15, and always it says the same thing at the very end.  Obviously this is very time consuming and frustrating.

I called Travelocity back again at some point and got a person who wasn’t able or interested in listening to the problem I was having online.  She was supremely confident that we wouldn’t have that problem over the phone.  She tried one of the date ranges (I think 6/29 to 7/15) that involved a flight from ANC-Fairbanks and then Fairbanks to FRA.  When it failed for her too, she thought using a different flight on the return trip from Fairbanks to ANC would fix the problem.  I kept trying to correct her and tell her I’d tried this many times and that the domestic (Alaska airlines) flight was NOT the problem.  She was a terrible listener.  I finally couldn’t tell her anything and practically had to hang up on her.  She was obviously reluctant to lose the sale since she already had my credit card info and everything.

I called back about 30 to 60 minutes later and just asked the first person I talked to if I could speak with a supervisor.  They wanted to know why, I explained the technical problem I was having and that I needed to talk to someone who had some authority.  I was hoping that if the tickets don’t exist that they could at least have them removed from the system.  You know, only show for sale the tickets that actually exist.  I did get transferred after a while to a guy who said he was a supervisor (Dan?), and he took the flight information I wanted, then said he had confirmed availability in the system and it wasn’t going to be a problem to book these tickets (this is what all the previous people I talked to by phone said too) and transferred me to a regular booking agent, over my polite protests.  That person finished taking all the information for the booking, had the exact same problem, and apologized and said he didn’t know why it was happening and basically could do nothing for me.

So then I went back to condor.com to buy direct from them (their listed prices are much higher than travelocity’s).  I found the best dates on their site, then just out of curiousity checked the same itinerary on Travelocity to compare.  By the way, most online travel sites didn’t have much in the way of anything for Condor’s Alaska-FRA flights, only Travelocity.  Maybe they’ve had similar problems and pulled the plug?  Anyway, you guys had the same flight for $200 less for our party of 3.  I thought I would try, what would it hurt to spend 10 more minutes just in case it worked.  And it went through!  This was around 9 am on 2/6, Alaska standard time.  So I had tickets, spending $3,047.60 to fly from 7/4 to 7/18 when I wanted to spend $2,166 on the 7/4 to 7/20 itinerary (which is still listed as of today 2/7 as available for a party of 3).

Now the final detail is that we have an infant who will be 10 months of age at the time of travel.  Travelocity’s site says that for children under 2 yoa, we have to contact the airline separately to arrange for their ticket at a reduced rate as a lap infant.  I called Condor today (2/7) at around noon Alaska time regarding this.  They asked for my booking number, which I apparently don’t have.   They took my 6-digit code that I’ll use to check in, found my reservation, and said it has not been finalized or confirmed, and therefore I cannot add an infant to it yet.

Why hasn’t it been confirmed??  I’ve paid you guys $900 more than I should have to, endured your poor phone customer service, and spent about 10 to 14 hours on this project.  All you have to do is take my money and buy me the tickets, and you’ve failed even at this.  I’ve used you guys a lot over the years for rental cars and flights and hotels, but this has been a horrible experience.  Maybe the takeaway lesson is your site comes up short for international stuff.  I know I’m probably supposed to call things like this in, not email, but after all the calls I’ve made I have zero confidence that I would communicate all this clearly, nor that the person I get randomly assigned to will be able to take all this in and resolve it correctly.

So how are you going to compensate me for the pain in the neck that this has been?  Two things at minimum:

1.  Finalize the booking or cancel everything and refund my money.  Then I can set about adding my lap infant direct through Condor, or in the case of a refund starting a new itinerary with them directly.

2.  If you finalize the booking, then credit me for the difference between the advertised price of $2,166 and the price I paid $3,047.60, a difference of $881.  OR AT LEAST have the itineraries that don’t actually exist removed from your website.

(Is it even legal to have all those bogus prices listed?  Bait and switch?)

You can reach me at schneidler@yahoo.com or my land line is 907-477-xxxx.  Thank you for your attention to this matter.  Sincerely,

Peter Schneidler

Kasigluk, AK

Sent via online email form at 2:05 pm on 2/7/10. Travelocity reference number 100208-000014.  And I should have an email acknowledgement within 30 minutes.

——————————————————————— (end of letter I sent via online email form)

Never got that email acknowledgement nor anything else from them.  I checked once or twice and it appeared that they hadn’t charged my credit card either.  Finally today (2/11) I checked and USAA shows they charged me $3,078, not the $3,046 as promised.  In addition, there is another $3,046 that is PENDING on the card, all of these with a 2/6 date.  Not a big deal right now because I don’t use that card, but it is eating up my credit limit on that card and is annoying and sloppy.  I called Condor and attempted to add the infant to our reservation (now that it seems like it must be finalized) but they said Travelocity has to do it.  Called Travelocity, spent some time on hold, got a guy (in India?) who took my info and put me on hold 3 times now, with an average hold time of 5 or 10 minutes each time (I’m still on hold as I type this).  He first asked a supervisor and checked his system and is now calling Condor directly to find out how much to charge me for the infant.  LESSON – BOOK DIRECT WITH THE AIRLINE NEXT TIME I FLY INTERNATIONALLY!!!!  Especially if the cost is close.

After 3 more holds, some as long as 10 minutes, he came on and said it would cost $128 and change.  I said fine and he put me on hold again to confirm the reservation.  I’m still on hold, this time for like 15-20 minutes and counting.  This call has taken over an hour so far, I’d say.  To add a lap infant ticket to my reservation.  OK, I’m done with that call at 3:07 pm.  The guy came on and said they can’t do it.  They added the name and put a note on it to the airline, but I have to call them to get it ticketed, and reference confirmation # 3T—-.   I told him I’ve already called them twice and they said they couldn’t do it, Travelocity has to.  He said yes, they’ve added the name, but now Condor must finalize the booking.  Aiyaiyaiyaiyai!

I called Condor at the number he gave, it is in CST and they are closed as of 9 minutes prior to my call.  Called the other number and learned it is in Germany.  Because I lack a Condor booking number and only have the 6-digit confirmation code, that requires a supervisor to look it up and find it, and supervisors in Germany apparently don’t work at 1 am.  Will try again tomorrow, or even tonight after 10 pm.

I called Condor at 7:15 am on 2/12, at the CST number.  Spoke with a woman who said Travelocity must charge me, not Condor.  She looked up the reservation and found Jonathan on there, but saw he isn’t completely booked.  Said she will call them and call me back, but they have to be the ones to charge me for the lap infant.  Holy cow.  Waiting for her call back.

Got a call from her (Gabi) that she couldn’t reach Travelocity due to crazy weather on the east coast monopolizing travelocity’s phone lines.  Said she will try again on Monday, thinks we’ll have it done then or Tuesday.  Said not to worry, we have time.  She said they have to call their help desk, she has had this happen with them before.  Will call me back Monday or Tuesday.

She called me on Tuesday I believe and said she was on hold for an hour or more with Travelocity, and the conclusion is they are supposed to call me, they have my number, and they are to call me and they’ll book the ticket for Jonathan.  It’s now Thursday and no call from Travelocity, but this morning I did get an email from them, a “travel reservation confirmation” that lists FOUR passengers.  Hooray!  It gives a total price of $3,175.80, and then a breakdown of:  “Your credit card statement may show separate airline charges to each passenger as listed: PETER SCHNEIDLER $1,079.20, TAMMY SCHNEIDLER $1,079.20, JONATHAN SCHNEIDLER $1,079.20 CLAIRE SCHNEIDLER $889.20” which of course doesn’t add up to $3,175.80.  I’ll check my credit card and see what they are charging it.  Previously they quoted me $3,047.60, so this appears to be a price of about $130 for Jonathan.  Just checked our credit card looks like they charged us a total of $3,163.27.  Hmmm, whatever.  Charge for Jonathan is actually $85.20, the rest is foreign transaction charges.   I called Condor just now and got disconnected twice, but third times the charm and I talked to a guy who looked up our reservation and said he sees all 4 of us including Jonathan, it’s all taken care of and ready to go.  Hooray!!!

This was a really bad customer service experience.  But I’ve had others recently (Electrolux, Experian) that somehow managed to be worse.  I’ll try and blog on those others soon.  Facebook has an “avoid travelocity” page that I had to join after this experience.  : – )

So, the reason for this post is my total confusion regarding my current insurer’s policy regarding double coverage.  This will be a long, boring post with lots of photos of boring stuff.  The only ones who could care about this are those who work in the field or who find themselves in the belly of the beast as I am now and turn to google in desperation.  Here are some photos of “explanation of benefit” (EOB) statements from a doctor visit in April.  At that visit, we paid $30.30 up front since our plan usually requires us to pay 90%.

So for those of you scoring at home, the total due is $303, $51.87 of which Premier (our insurance company, aka PCA) says “exceeds usual & customary.”  Of the remaining $251.13, they apply a $10 deductible, then pay the rest at 90%.  My wife is the one who went to the Dr, and this is applied to her insurance.  Then check out the EOB below, which is applied to my insurance (same insurance company, same employer, same benefits, etc).

So if you can’t read that, the total due is $303, $51.60 of which “exceeds usual & customary.”  No idea why the amount that exceeded usual and customary changed slightly.  Of the other $251.40, they apply the annual $150 deductible, and then pay $85.98, which they claim is 90% of the remainder (even though it’s not – it’s just the amount needed to get to $303 in total).

So taken together, they applied $160 to deductibles AND paid the full $303 despite the fact that $51 and change exceeded usual and customary.  Is that normal?  Plus we paid $30.30, and haven’t seen any refund.

Fast forward a few months to a dental visit.  This one also has charges that exceed usual and customary, but they’re not picking them up this time.

Tammy is again the patient in this example, and the above is her EOB statement.  Below is the same thing, but applied to my insurance.

So why did they pay the charges that exceed usual & customary in the first case, but not this one?  Our dentist sent us a bill for the $65.69 for each of the 3 of us, and I’m unsure whether I should pay the dentist or try to get the insurance company to pay it.  Some of our other medical providers will write off the amount not covered by insurance that is labelled as exceeding “usual & customary,” but not apparently in the case of Dr Nick Feldman!  Who, I must say, although it was only one visit, appears to be a superb dentist.  In addition to the usual stuff, the guy takes digital pics of each of your teeth from 3 different angles, and you watch it all on a color monitor – even with Claire they let her hit the button to take each picture – she left the dentist at 38 months thinking that going to the dentist is fun fun fun.

About now you are thinking “What a huge waste of time.  Did you consider CALLING the insurance company??”  Yes, I did and spoke with a woman there for literally like over an hour trying to make sense of the 4/30/09 EOB statements.  We got nowhere.  She was very nice and professional and patient, but we just repeatedly missed each other and both left the conversation very frustrated.  She even called me back at home (unexpectedly) a few minutes after we hung up and we went around again for like 20-30 more minutes, me asking earnest questions 10 different ways and her endlessly explaining but to me she was not understanding my questions and answering questions I hadn’t asked and repeating the same information every time.  The conversation ended with her basically saying she has lots of work to do and can’t spend all day repeating the same information to me that I can’t absorb.

Much of the confusion is because for the last 5 years Tammy had the only job and all our insurance was through her.  But for the 14 months since that time we are both working for the school district and have dual coverage.  And a big part of the problem I think is that our medical plan book that has all the details doesn’t have a section on dual coverage that spells out how it will work.  Another factor is that we have significant history with this company with lots of mistakes in their payouts, like an average of a couple errors per year probably, to the point that I keep all the charges from all the EOBs in 3 big excel spreadsheets.  Tammy adds that another reason not to trust them is that our insurance company changes its name every 6 months and is based in Reno, NV.  : – )

I have to admit that this probably WAS a total waste of time, but for whatever reason I was compelled to do it.  Now I can just send an email to Premier with a link to this blog post and not have to explain it all in the email.  ; – )  So for all of you insurance experts – do you have any insight for me?  Am I screwed up or is it them?  Should I pay the dentist?

****UPDATE as of 10/22/09****

I called the dentist to schedule a visit for a new crown I need.  I asked what my balance was, and they told me zero.  Apparently PCA paid my entire bill, including the $65.69 that exceeded usual and customary rates (UCR – I’m learning the lingo here).  So I took the plunge and called PCA.  They sent me to the same poor woman I spoke with at such length before.  I’m sure she remembered me, or certainly did after a few minutes.  She explained that they paid the eligible expense on mine at 70% (because I’m in my 1st full calendar year with LKSD, it goes up year by year by 10%), then they coordinated it with Tammy’s coverage, which paid 100% of what was left, including the amount that exceeded UCR.

So my question for her was how come they didn’t coordinate Tammy and Claire’s visits with my coverage so that mine would pay 70% of the amounts that exceeded UCR from their appointments?  She couldn’t get it, but was convinced that I wasn’t understanding her repeated explanations.  She was unfailingly polite and patient, and it really pains me to email or call PCA and ask for anyone but her in order to get this resolved.  I think she is assigned to our company, so we’re sort of stuck with it.  It may well be that they have a solid rationale or explanation, but I didn’t hear it.

So now it’s some time later and I called them and asked for anyone but the first person and was directed to Suzi.  She listened well and after 10 minutes of explaining and some confusion she spoke with her supervisor with me on hold for 5-10 minutes and then came back on and said I was absolutely right, it was inconsistent and the amounts in excess of UCR should always be paid by the other spouse’s coverage at whatever their coverage is (in my case 70%).  So instead of owing $65.69 on each of Tammy and Claire’s accounts with Dr Feldman, we’ll only owe 30% of that (about $20) after PCA coughs up their 70%.  In a diplomatic way she closed by saying that things aren’t always as consistent at PCA as they’d like and they’re working on it.  I’m thrilled, not for the $90 or whatever they will pay, but that there is an end to this long story.  Speaking with that first employee was like being on the eternal treadmill elliptical of insurance futility.  And the worst part is she was as nice as your grandma so I can’t hate her.

“My supervisor at work just now showed me her yahoo account.  Up to yesterday she had a normal yahoo mail account, receiving around 5 messages per day in her inbox.  Today when she logged in, she has 5 BILLION messages in her inbox (it wasn’t such a round number, it was a huge string of digits without commas and I rounded it).  According to a December yahoo article, the world’s total email volume per day is right around 100 billion.

When she logs in there is a message to the effect that “we are protecting your account and you won’t be able to send or receive mail for the next 48 hours while we address this.”  If she goes into her inbox, it only shows what she saw as of yesterday (she can’t receive mail, basically).  I googled this problem and have found nothing.  Have you guys ever heard of it?  At first I just thought she gave her address out to the wrong site, or that someone was out to get her and used some malicious spam-creation program against her.  But 5% of the world’s total emails?!?  Maybe a yahoo internal error is more likely?  If any of you have an answer, we’d love to hear it.  I must say I find it all rather amusing.  Poor Tammy would have an aneurism.  She **hates** having too much unread mail in her inbox.  Must…keep…READING!!!!!  : – )  I told my supervisor she is living a jr highers dream.  She truly is the most_popular_person on the planet.

It stayed that way for a few days and then all of a sudden everything was back to normal.  So I have no answer, but if someone googles this topic NOW by golly they’ll find this thread and know they’re not alone.