The Joys of Online (Up)dating

I hope our kids never move again!

The process of keeping addresses and other crucial account information up to day for full-time RV’ers can certainly be a pain!  A pain I thought I had gotten past for the time being — and sadly I was mistaken.

If we go back three years our address has been:

• our home,
• our daughter’s house
• our daughter’s NEW house

And mixed in there is the fact that we both went from non-social security recipients and non-medicare participants to our both being in the system.

Add in 2 credit card fraud alerts and new credit cards issued with new credit card numbers and I’m tired of trying to insure that each and every supplier, account, financial entity, etc., has been contacted and the pertinent info successfully and correctly made. 

Thursday was devoted largely to sorting out United Healthcare, and verifying Social Security and Medicare information.  And, in the process we needed to make sure that as many of our accounts included alternate trusted representatives so that in case of incapacitation we didn’t get hung up on HIPPA issues.  So, getting me on Peg’s account and her on my accounts and Kathryn our daughter on both of ours was part of the hassle.

I’m sure I am no different from anyone else — I hate dealing with automated phone systems.  The delay is bad enough — wading through all the automated prompts.  The fact that the automated prompts don’t always get you to the right person is a bigger complaint/concern.  And is there anyone on earth who is not insulted by being told, time and time and time again that “Your call is important to us” — but not important enough for the company/agency to hire enough employees that they can actually process phone calls as they come in instead of waiting, as I did this morning for some 23 minutes before talking to a single living being — and then being told I was not talking to the person who could fix my problem.

There is a fine line between wanting to be legally compliant and obsessive.  I really don’t think it’s the government’s business how often I travel or where — that’s the benefit of being in a free country. But new-ish postal regulations, and the glut of  Medicare and Social Security fraud perpetrated by scoff-laws have meant that certain main cannot be held for pickup and must be returned to sender.  Making sure you have changed all the governmental addresses in your life is a huge deal — no one wants to find their Social Security cut off because out Uncle thinks we’re dead, or trying to pull a sneaky.

And then there is the fact that things keep changing.  You can’t rely upon processes or procedures that you’ve lived by for the last 20 years, or 40 years to be any good tomorrow (or maybe even yesterday)

I am horrible about keeping up on notices mailed to me by businesses and governmental organization.  I hope you can do better than me.

Anyway…. Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll talk with you tomorrow.