Hi all -
I have a bit of a weird situation. I had some dental work done (about $800 worth), and have dental insurance. I pay my premiums every month, etc. The claim was submitted on time by the dental office, but apparently the insurance company never received it.
I called the insurance company after I received a bill in the mail from the dentists office saying they hadn't received payment, and they told me they never received it and to re-submit the claim. The dentists office wouldn't re-submit for me as it had been several months, so they sent me a copy of the codes/work I had done, and I filled out a claim and faxed over all of the information to the insurance company according to the form.
I called the insurance company and the lady I spoke to said it could take 4-6 weeks to process (...) and it fell off my radar until I got a letter from a debt collection agency saying I owed them the amount that I owed the dentists office. After calling the insurance company again, they are claiming they never received my faxed claim or the original, and had no record of my phone conversation last year. They said I could re-submit the claim, but because it had been so long, it would likely be rejected for "timely filing" - which I could appeal, but unless I could come up with some evidence proving I had submitted the claim they couldn't say for sure if I would win or not. The dentists office didn't have a fax confirmation after all this time, and it took me awhile to dig through all of my stuff until I was able to find one.
Long story short, after about 5 or 6 more calls and several more months of wrangling, I finally got a check from them for the amount that they were supposed to pay for my dental work.
In any case, this situation obviously pisses me off for several reasons - impact on my credit, the fact that it had been sent to collections when it should have been paid by insurance and wasn't, and that I've had to deal with them "losing" my claim multiple times.
The dentists office has refused to see me until the balance is paid (understandably), but say I can pay them directly and they will contact the debt agency to inform them that the balance has been paid, and then they'll back off.
So, should I pay the dentists office the full amount, or the collections agency? I've heard of "payoff amounts" less than what the total bill is when working with debt collection agencies, and I'm wondering what the potential impact of that is on my credit by doing that vs paying the full amount to the dentists office?
I have a check for about $680 of the $800 that I owe, so I'm still out about $120 if I pay the dentists office, unless I'm able to settle with the collection agency for less than the total amount.
Submitted February 17, 2017 at 01:12PM by not-my-debt http://ift.tt/2m3Zu3A
