Saturday, September 26, 2009
I'm a bit of a pack rat. I save almost all paperwork and never seem to throw anything away. I think I have almost every pay stub since I started working for the Congress back in 1988. That's important because my dentist has been sending me a bill for $400 since early summer. Recently, they resorted to writing nasty notes on them about sending the bill to a collection agency. I hadn't paid it because I knew I didn't owe them the money but was probably a bit lax in letting them know I didn't owe them the money.
On Friday, I went in and sat down with the gal who handles payment (she isn't a very pleasant person to begin with but she was actually fairly nice considering she regarded me as a scofflaw). She pulled up my records and I told her I didn't owe them any money. She clearly wasn't going to take my word for it so I glanced at the computer and saw that they charged me an extra $100 for each of the four teeth I had work done on. I had my estimate (because of the pack rat thing) and showed her and she immediately recognized her error and credited my account. No complaining, she just did it. However, I suspect had I not had that paper from 2008 she wouldn't have been so nice about it. And I wouldn't have known why exactly I didn't owe the money because truthfully, I didn't know why I didn't owe it I just knew I didn't. And that logic doesn't work well in a court of law.
On Friday, I went in and sat down with the gal who handles payment (she isn't a very pleasant person to begin with but she was actually fairly nice considering she regarded me as a scofflaw). She pulled up my records and I told her I didn't owe them any money. She clearly wasn't going to take my word for it so I glanced at the computer and saw that they charged me an extra $100 for each of the four teeth I had work done on. I had my estimate (because of the pack rat thing) and showed her and she immediately recognized her error and credited my account. No complaining, she just did it. However, I suspect had I not had that paper from 2008 she wouldn't have been so nice about it. And I wouldn't have known why exactly I didn't owe the money because truthfully, I didn't know why I didn't owe it I just knew I didn't. And that logic doesn't work well in a court of law.
