Head, meet wall

I had the pleasure of calling my benefits administrator company yesterday. For the most part, my dealings with them have been much better and easier than the previous administrators. I'm not sure why after sending the same receipt to them multiple times, they only "received" it when I sent it certified mail, but other than tiny things like that, our relationship has been ok.

Having said that, grrr. It all started with a hold time of 35 minutes on the first call. For 35 minutes, I heard that I was next in line. I finally hung up and dialed again.

That call was eventually answered after a 40 minutes hold (again, I was next in line!). During that hold time, I jotted down 3 questions. One was about a tax form for the short term disability payments I received, one was about existing claim statuses and the third was about termination of benefits after leaving employment.

I got answers to the first two questions that sort of appeased me (yes, I should receive something and I still have several open claims). The CSR didn't seem too confident in her answers - it took her a lot of words to answer. But she answered, so ok! The third one, nope.

I looked through all of my benefit documentation to find out when benefits end after giving notice. My last day with this company will be the last working day of January. Most places offer coverage until the end of the month in which separation occurs, meaning as of February 1, I no longer have employee sponsored coverage. I wanted to confirm.

And the company that administers my benefits couldn't tell me when benefits end. It could be the middle of February. It could be longer, depending on when the company notifies the benefit administrators. Maybe it's the last day I "work". I think this is something that should be pretty cut and dried, thus my frustration.

I've escalated this to the corporate HC people (who are probably going to tell me that they can't help me because I don't work directly for them, but am a contract worker), but no one was in the office yesterday because of the blizzard. The blizzard that took place 3 days prior to me calling. 

I should have just banged my head against the wall...it would've been more productive.

Rant over. Today is another day - maybe I'll get answers!