Dining on Whining

This afternoon was a rocky start to my spring break, so I just read over some of the advice I posted yesterday to help me keep my current frustrations in perspective. And here they are:

1. Our health insurance company Southern Health will not give out billing codes for us to file our own claims for midwifery services that we already know they don’t cover (but we can’t appeal that, apparently, until we’ve been denied a claim, which we can’t file without the codes, although we can send a letter of complaint, which would make us sound like whiners when what we really want is a policy rules exception based on sound reasoning). And the lady’s supervisor did not call me back as promised. Phooey on Southern Health for being a bureaucracy that doesn’t support common sense. We’re gonna find the codes on our own little own, doggonit. Advice #14: Go big and don’t bail!

2. Points.com has for weeks claimed that they are “unable to process” our attempts to redeem air miles. Customer “service” wrote suggested, “Can you please contact AAdvantage to verify the format of your name?  Some part of the information entered cannot be registered.” Umm, they asked for name and address and phone number, all of which I entered according to the registered format. Advice #25: Never kick a porcupine with bare feet.

3. So when we called American Airlines’ AAdvantage customer “service,” the lady said we would probably have to check with points.com, and then she transferred us to an exceptionally rude “tech help” person who taught us how to click on links to find what we’d already good and well found, and then he told us the phone number for points.com (416-595-0000) and hung up. Literally. Advice #7: Never argue with an idiot. They will bring you down to their level and then win with experience.

4. If you keep track of the “numbers” section along the left panel of this blog, you noticed that the “cow escapes onto our land” figure jumped from 9 to 19 today, accompanied by more shoddy fence repairs from the farmer tenant. At what point does our garden deserve police protection? Advice #10. Don’t eat yellow snow.