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Today I received my THIRD incorrect bill of this pregnancy. All have been for different things, and all have been WRONG.
First one, Quest sent me a bill for bloodwork. I think they simply didn’t submit it… I took care of that in the early fall.

Second one, last week, I got a bill for my first Non-Stress Test. I think that was because the referral and the bill overlapped… that should be taken care of.

This one, was for the ultrasound I had in JULY. JULY!!! I called the hospital, and they said the claim was denied and I had to call Keystone. Didn’t double check my info at all, and when I said, why do I have to call them, when it’s your problem, and I think I said “freaking” problem… the woman hung up on me. Yeah, I was a little touchy, because who wants to start getting 7 month old bills 2 days before your due date? I mean, what if I start getting a FLOOD of bills that I wasn’t expecting now? Anyway, I called Keystone, and they said they never got the claim, and the woman was super nice and tried calling them, but they wouldn’t answer so she left a message. I didn’t want to let it sit without confirmation, so I called the hospital back and got another not helpful person who said, Yes they denied the claim, and I gave her my ID number (which changed in November– my insurance didn’t change, just the numbers), and she didn’t have it, but didn’t take it, and said well, it’s probably the same account… I’ll resubmit, but call them back.
So, I call Keystone back (get the same nice person), and she finds that these idiots at Penn submitted my claim to my insurance that expired in April of 2004!! PFFT. So, she got through to someone this time, and they will submit it and it should be taken care of, but I want to call back and tell Cynthia (who hung up on me) and Kashlin (who didn’t listen to me) to STUFF IT! In fact, I think I will. Because what else do I have to do today? Besides sit here with a giant baby inside who is making NO EFFORT to leave the womb!!!

Joe took the car in yesterday, picked it up after 5, to find that they did NOT replace the oil pan, but saved themselves some money by only replacing the bolt. WTF?
They will be getting a screw you letter, and we will have to go somewhere else from now on.

He has to walk all the up to the Car Place and drive home in rush hour traffic, and then do it all again MONDAY, because CENTRAL CITY TOYOTA did not fix our car today. They claim the new piece was “damaged”– we suspect they didn’t order it or get it.

After asking everybody we knew about the oil pan problem on our car, we were convinced that it was 100% Toyota’s fault, and that if they didn’t cover the full replacement, we were going to take them to small claims court. Joe biked over there today and talked to the Customer Service Manager and told him we thought they should cover the whole thing, not just the labor. I had prepared a dossier on all the maintenance we had done on the car in the 3+ years we’ve had it, so Joe was ready for battle. Apparently Mr. Customer Service said “So you don’t think that us covering the labor is enough?”
Ha, silly question. So, They will cover everything, it will be fixed Friday. And we will never go there again.

We are leaving for Michigan tomorrow morning– dropping Mr. Pinky off at 9 AM or thereabouts and then getting on the road for 10 fun filled hours on the road. Yesterday, Joe scheduled an oil change at the Toyota place. We have a Mazda, but the Mazda service places are really far away, and don’t have good hours. The Toyota place is right near Penn and they will give Joe a shuttle ride to work after he drops it off. But this time, they had no appts during the week, so we took it in yesterday. We planned to wait for it, but they said it would be 1.5 hours, so we took the shuttle to Penn and had breakfast. We walked back slowly to the shop, so it was 2 hours later, and it turns out they didn’t do the oil change.
The said they went to take the bolt off the oil pan, and it wouldn’t budge, so they could tell it was stripped. Instead of taking it off, changing the oil, and leaving us with leaky oil, they tried to “page” Joe. We had all our cell phones on us, but the only number they had for him was his office number. Duh. Anyway, the guy does a quick estimate of how much this bolt will cost us, and says Five Ninety-two. My first thought was $5.92? Why’d they bother waiting? But NOOOOOO, it was FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO DOLLARS. To give us a new oil pan on a car that is only 3 years old, only has 38,000 miles on it, and since the first two times when we went to Mazda, has ONLY HAD THE OIL CHANGED THERE! I said, we don’t have that kind of money! And Joe immediately says, but I’ve only had it changed here, and not that often. I chimed in with the fact that I had a car for years that had 160,000 miles on it and had never heard of this. The guy says, it’s just regular wear and tear! I didn’t feel like fighting it. We have a Mazda extended warranty. I don’t know if something like this is covered under it, but I figured we go there instead. We still had to wait to get our paperwork and keys back, so Joe was steaming. He found the customer relations manager, and got him to agree that yeah, they could have stripped it, and that he would do the labor for free, making us just pay for the part– $179. Now, that’s a lot better than $592, but if he’s admitting fault already, shouldn’t they just freaking fix it? The guy who gave us the estimate said something like, “I don’t know Mazdas”– now, if they don’t know Mazdas, they shoud not work on them, right? If they can freaking strip a bolt changing the oil only a handful of times, what else could they do wrong? Why should we trust them with the new oil pan? Why should we take it back there for regular oil changes if they will only strip the bolt on the new oil pan in less than 3 years? Argh.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to deal with it. We were thinking of a couple things.
1. Take it to a Mazda place in Michigan and tell them what happened, with the assumption that this is just regular wear and tear. See if it will be covered under our warranty.
2. Take it to a Mazda place in Michigan, and don’t tell them what happened, just ask for an oil change. Maybe Toyota was wrong about the stripping… If they weren’t wrong, and Mazda goes ahead and takes it off, then we could be stuck with leaky oil…
3. Wait till we get back from Michigan, and fight it with the Toyota people. If they are admitting some fault, then why should we have to pay at all?

If anyone knows anything about cars, let me know. The message on our paperwork says specifically “Oil drain plug is tight in the pan, needs new oil pan”. Blah blah blah.
As I said before, Argh.
And then we decided to top off our day by going to the Verizon place at the mall to cancel one of our cell phones. After waiting forever, I found out I couldn’t do it there. I also couldn’t do it online when I tried on Friday. I have to call.
I guess that’s enough complaning. Maybe I’ll go make some roasted potatoes for breakfast.