Tim has been stuck in a 7-month limbo with his ex-health insurer Kaiser Permanente that he is trying to break it off with. First he was told to write in a fax that said “I [name here] no longer want health care coverage by KP.” Then it turned out they gave him the wrong fax number, which he found out after he got a bill for missing payment. He called back and got the right fax number, was promised a refund and prorated payment, and sent in all his info. Instead, he got back a letter from the collections department.

Tim writes:

On August 16th I faxed the additional information they requested in and on September 3rd received a letter stating my coverage had been canceled. However, the cancellation date was incorrect; the date was listed as August 16th [Tim needed it to reflect the first date he requested the cancellation on. Ed.]. So I again call member services to sort this out.
This time I speak to a gentleman who showed records of all my faxes and correspondence and said it would not be an issue; they will issue a refund and correct the cancellation date.

Fast forward to October 2010; I have not received my refund so I contact KP to inquire on its distribution. There a lady says she shows all of this in the computer, she will prompt the billing department to send. Again in November, no refund so they prompt the billing department again.

December 14th I contact them again as I have yet to receive my refund. A gentleman states that he shows a $16X.XX refund and I should give it two weeks. Now, January 23, 2011 I have yet to receive my refund and instead received a collections notice where KP has sent the prorated premium amount for 8/1/10-8/16/10 to collections. Not only should my coverage have been cancelled during this period, they never even sent me a bill for the period!

I can find no one at KP to resolve this issue; all I want is for them to honor their commitment to retroactively cancel my coverage as of July 2, 2010, refund my prorated July premium and resolve this collections issue.

I looked for information to pull together an EECB, but to no avail. Any help from you or your posters will be greatly appreciated!”

Hopefully someone will see this who knows what else I should do.

Thank you!

– Tim

We’ve reached out to Kaiser for comment and to see if they can help with Tim’s issue. Remember that even if the specific email addresses aren’t listed on Consumerist, you can always use these techniques to build your own EECB, or electronic email carpet bomb, which is when you send a well-written, polite, complaint letter to a batch of top-tier executives at a company.

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