Torrington resident Roger Huckfeldt found himself in robocall hell trying to find someone who could help him get his 85-year-old mother a new health insurance provider after UnitedHealthcare announced it was leaving Wyoming.
His story illustrates how far downhill customer service has trended, as well as the kind of difficulties Wyomingites are facing as they navigate a new health care landscape.
UnitedHealth is one of multiple carriers that left Wyoming’s Advantage health insurance marketplace amid rising health care costs, changes to federal policies, and the expiration of the enhanced Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) tax credits.
“UnitedHealth was an advantage plan provider in Wyoming and, back in October, they sent a letter to Mom saying you’ll have to find something else come the first of the year,” Huckfeldt said. “So, we immediately started the process of trying to find health insurance for mom.”
Huckfeldt started with a state advocacy group that helped him figure out where and how to start shopping for a new plan.
‘I’m Not Going To Do This'
“We looked through the government’s websites which, in my opinion, were difficult for me to navigate,” he said. “My 85-year-old mother would never have been able to get that done.
"She’d have thrown up her hands and said, ‘I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to have insurance, to heck with it.’”
In fact, throughout the time-consuming, laborious process, his mother kept saying, “We don’t have to do this. We’re not going to do this.”
But Huckfeldt wasn’t willing to let his mom go without health insurance.
To get her the best plan for the best price, he first talked to a range of health care providers about their experiences, asking which insurance company had done the best job of taking care of them.
He also turned to friends and family, asking them which insurance companies had been easiest to work with and best about paying claims.
Ultimately, the price of the plan was the biggest factor.
“With mom pretty much pinching pennies as she can, we chose to go with the least expensive,” Huckfeldt said. “The website was not easy to manage and maneuver through, but they had a number to call, so we went that route.”
Same Old Song And Dance
We care about you, we want your business, please wait for the next available attendant.
These soon became phrases Huckfeldt could recite in his dreams — or in his nightmares.
“I think the first time we called, it took over an hour and a half before I got to talk to someone,” Huckfeldt said.
That someone turned out to have an extremely heavy accent, to the point where Huckfeldt was forced to politely request someone he could better understand.
“My hearing isn’t that good,” he told the woman. “And with your accent, I struggle. But please don’t hang up on me. I spent too much time waiting to talk to you.”
The new person, however, wasn’t able to help and told Huckfeldt that the company would call back the next day.
“So, basically, I spent the entire day at that point, and they’ll call me back tomorrow,” Huckfeldt said.
While the company did call back the next day, it was a robocall that first verified his identity, then advised him to wait for the next available attendant.
The automated system didn’t, however, say just how long that wait would be.
“Four and one-half hours later, the next available attendant came on and explained what we needed,” Huckfeldt said. “Then they transferred me to someone and, in the process, we were disconnected.”
Huckfeldt tried calling back but never could get through to anyone else that day.
“I spent that entire day on hold,” he said. “Fortunately for me, I have multiple phones, and we just listened to that irritating on-hold music and the message that comes on intermittently that says, ‘Please hold for the next available customer service representative.’”
Complicated Rules
Multiple times during the process, Huckfeldt said he considered hanging up on all the robocalls.
But insurance for his mom is important and not something where he could just throw up his hands and say, “Oh well.”
At a certain point in the process, he had already signed his mom up for a companion drug policy to cover her medications, after being told everything was good to go with this company.
That meant they could no longer just change their minds and select a different insurance company or go with an advantage plan.
“Mom was issued what’s called an exemption, which allows her to qualify for another plan without having to pre-qualify,” Huckfeldt said. “Without the exception, she would have to go through a medical review and, if she had any issues in her medical past, they could deny her coverage.”
Houston, We Have A Problem
Huckfeldt spent a week trying to reach someone with the company to find out what they'd need to complete his mom’s enrollment in her new health insurance plan.
Finally, he had a little inspiration and decided to talk to one of the company’s licensed Wyoming agents in person.
They would surely know what he needed to send and who to send it to so that he could get his mother’s enrollment finished.
He just needed a copy of the letter from United, he was told, showing she’s eligible to switch to a new health insurance plan.
Huckfeldt took a photo of the entire letter, just as the agent had suggested, and he emailed it off to the insurance provider.
He got a new robocall right after that, which was an agent telling him that everything was all set. The company had everything it needed.
Huckfeldt was breathing a big sigh of relief, thinking he was finally finished with all the madness and that his mom had health insurance.
He was wrong.
The next week, he got another robocall advising him that the company was still missing some of the things it needed, asking him to wait for the next available attendant.
“By then, we’re into the holidays,” Huckfeldt said. “So, I deal with the holidays. People not answering, people — well, it was just kind of a mess.”
Finally, Huckfeldt was able to reach a real live human being after several persistent hours, who told him that the problem was the photo he’d sent had been uploaded incorrectly, and that it was an issue that a supervisor would have to fix.
When Huckfeldt asked what he needed to do, however, the person told him they’d have to call him back.
“This is after being put on hold for multiple hours to get to that person,” Huckfeldt said.
One Tiny Corner Stops The World
Of course, the call the next day was yet another robocall — and it was disconnected again.
After that, Huckfeldt wasn’t able to reconnect with anyone at the company until the first Monday after the New Year.
“I get a phone call that says, ‘Please hold for the next attendant.’ Four and a half hours (of holding) and they disconnected me,” Huckfeldt said. “So I called again, and this time I called on both phones, so I had two phones on hold and waited and waited and waited and never got through to anybody the whole day.”
Huckfeldt was eventually able to connect with a supervisor about whatever was missing.
“Come to find out, in the image that was uploaded, there was a tiny piece of the corner of the document that wasn’t in the photograph,” Huckfeldt said. “Now there was nothing in that corner, but because it wasn’t the complete document they were holding that application up over a tiny corner.”
The missing corner wasn’t but two pencil tips in width, Huckfeldt said. But nonetheless, he had to send a new photo showing that corner, even though there was nothing on it.
By this time, Huckfeldt was unwilling to let the woman hang up on him until he heard the magic words: "Yes, we have everything. I’ve submitted it. I’ve expedited it. Everything looks good.'”
Instead, she said something that gave Huckfeldt an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“We’ll send your agent an email letting them know this is done,” she said.
“Oh, that’s no good to me,” Huckfeldt protested. “Send the email to me.”
“Well, we don’t usually do that …” the woman began.
“You will this time, by gosh,” Huckfeldt said, determined not to get cut out of a loop that would tell him if something was going awry with his mother’s new health insurance.
By this time, Huckfeldt had spent nearly 45 hours on the phone, much of it on hold, trying to get his mother signed up for her preferred insurance company.
And at this point in the process, it was their one and only option for her to get insurance coverage.
Still Waiting
Huckfeldt is still waiting to see if everything goes through as the woman advised him.
His mom’s health insurance cards are supposed to arrive within seven to 14 business days.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen if those people don’t come through,” Huckfeldt said. “What I do know is that the particular health insurance company touts themselves — on every one of the recordings I listened to over that 40 hours — ‘Yeah, we want your business, we call them customer service representatives.'
"Well, there is no customer service,” Huckfeldt said. "I truly believe our country lost customer service in 2020.”
The rise in automated systems to handle customer service calls, mixed in with so many representatives who are remote workers from Florida to the Philipines and beyond, is what Huckfeldt believes is contributing to the outright death of any real customer service left in America.
The remote workers in particular bother Huckfeldt, a former lawmaker, who hates to see the outsourcing of so many jobs.
“Wyoming could just as easily have call centers here versus those in Florida and the Phillipines,” he said. “Many of the employees I did get to speak with struggled with pronouncing basic words in the English language.”
Huckfeldt is also concerned about how many other people in Wyoming who had to seek a new carrier had to face the same obstacles he did and, ultimately, just gave up and decided to do without insurance.
“I made use of my time while I was on hold,” Huckfeldt added. “I called the governor’s office, and I spoke with people there. I called the insurance commissioner’s office, and I spoke with people there.
"I called the advocacy group that’s supposed to help with this insurance because of the enrollments and things like that and I spoke to them.”
Huckfeldt has also reached out to friends to ask about their struggles and found his exasperating experience was not unique.
“There are just a lot of people who just flat get put on hold and never to be heard again,” he said.
Solutions In The Silly Season
With so many people running for office, Huckfeldt hopes the issue will resonate this political season.
“We have people running for governor, we have people running for U.S representative,” he said. “We’ve got all these political races that will come up this summer.
"What are you actually going to do to help this particular situation? Because it is an issue.”
Maybe one solution, Huckfeldt said, is for the Wyoming Department of Insurance to simply prohibit Wyoming insurers from placing callers on hold.
“Wyoming licenses insurance agents,” Huckfeldt said. "We say, ‘Yep, if you follow these rules here, you get to sell insurance to the people of Wyoming, because we want the best possible insurance for those who purchase insurance in Wyoming.’
"The best way to do that is through rule and regulation. Just have the Insurance Commission say you don’t put people on hold. If you’re dealing with the state of Wyoming, have live people answer the calls.”
Wyoming Department of Insurance Commissioner Jeff Rude told Cowboy State Daily Huckfeldt's is one of the worst examples of customer service he’s ever seen.
“It is truly awful,” he said. “We are aware that the industry is increasingly utilizing AI but haven’t observed an increase in complaints.”
That said, Rude doesn’t believe he has the authority under existing rules and regulations to take the step Huckfeldt is suggesting.
“It could be done if there is a statutory prohibition,” he said. “That is something he or others could take up with their representatives."
One step that Rude could already take would be to investigate the company for a pattern of such behavior, were Huckfeldt to file a complaint.
“Under Wyoming Statute, the DOI (Department of Insurance) can fine an agent or insurer up to $5,000 per violation,” he said. “We really don’t do it very often, and it is only done when there is a pattern of misconduct.
"We can also suspend an insurer’s license, but this is a drastic action and very rare.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
