Did I miss something? Where the hell is Dana?:eyebrow:

she got a proper job

Oh.

Hi.

I have been barely checking in for the past decade. I started calling here when this was a BBS on my Commodore 64. No longer have the modem or that 64, but still have one that needs to be unpacked in my office.

I got married, got a management job, got promoted, got 2 master's degrees (MS and MBA), wife had twins (22 months old now), and moved to NJ and Indiana in the space of 10 months.

We're now living north of Indianapolis in Carmel, Indiana, and I'm now working as an Executive Director of InfoSec somewhere in this area (those of you who know me on LinkedIn know where).

I hope all is well with everyone.

Now let's see who pops up from the BBS days :)

Mitch! Great to hear from you. Not surprised at your success but sad to hear you're one of those evil MBAs tw warns us about. :lol2:

:thumbsup: good day sir

Hey mitch. Good to hear from you.

Mitch, I remember you, though I imagine you don't remember me. I think the above post might be the first one you ever didn't sign with your name. :)

Hey man! Wow - you've been busy.

FWIW, I still have the computer you recommended many years ago. Still working great too.

Hi Mitch! Glad to hear that you're doing all right.

*waves at Grav*

Hi. Sorry I've been a bit absent lately. I have been checking by a couple of times a week, but finding it hard to concentrate on reading and not really had the mental energy to post. I think, possibly because I spend such a lot of my day now communicating with people, that when I get home I just want to shut down that part of my brain.

It's been a pretty intensive couple of months. The three weeks of 'Creche' working, where trainees are live on the phones but with focused support, ended on Friday. We won't be joining our teams until Oct 10th, but the focussed support is now over - there is general support in place as there is for everyone (technical advisor for each team, and a referral line if you come across something you can't figure out using information portal - but that is a much less ready by your side kind of support,and assumes that you have a handle on basics.


I do not have a handle on basics :P


I'm getting there - but there's a fuckton of specialist knowledge, intricate systems and processes all of which vary according to specific insurance policies (of which there are hundreds - different brands and providers, owned by or underwritten by us, banks, building societies, brokers etc )

Dealing with all that, and trying not to fuck up and get a payment returned, because of some small clause in the individual policy, or have a supplier instruction get lost in the system because you didn't check a little box, or fail to get some crucial piece of information and have to call the policyholder back, all while talking to the customer and trying to help them navigate a stressful situation - it can be intense.

Half the call are just people who need redirecting, or an update on a claim. But then it's like - you have to be really careful, and check the file notes, because they might be a CFU case (fraud)in which case you aren't allowed to tell them anything about the claim, you just have to tell them someone from the team dealing with their claim will get back to them. Or, they may be with the loss adjusters and you spend the next 20 minutes trying to find out what the hell is going on ...

Or the policy number is from a scheme that doesn't pull through to our system and you have to ring through to the broker and get the cover details and enter it all manually on the system

And take full file notes - including all the different actions, check their contact details, ask the underwriting questions. Check inception date and prev.claims,and if necessary ask questions needed for carrying out an insurance check,like time at address, prev. address, how many adults over 18 etc.

If it's a buildings claim you do a quick fire quote using the buildings triage tool. A single item you might validate through the validation tool. If they express any dissatisfaction you log it on the complaint system....

But before all of that, you have to find them on the system, and bring up the special handling instructions for their scheme. And the online guidance system for whatever it is they're looking to claim for (often multiple things).

A call can take 20-30 minutes. But some are really quick. Some calls you're logging new claims,and others you are picking up an ongoing situation - like the other day I answered a call and within five minutes I was knee deep in a car crash of an existing claim, where complaints had been raised and threats of ombudsman made.

It's a long time since I had a job where I felt time pressure of this sort - as in, there aren't enough hours in the shift to do everything. I am sure I'll get faster, and cleaner in what I'm doing - fewer call backs, less time desperately trying to locate a piece of information or figure out who the fuck should be dealing with this and what is their number - but just the times you need to make a commitment to finding something out and getting back to someone, trying to sort out an instruction that shows as sent but for some reason hasn't arrived with the supplier.

Or, because we're all scheduled, and compliance to schedule is a thing - you may leave the write up and instructions on a claim til after your break or lunch, but then when you log back in, before you've a chance to click yourself into off-call working, a call comes through and now you're knee deep in another claim - you've 10 fucking windows open on your screen and five different word docs, pdfs, or excel docs, and several time sensitive and mildly complex processes to follow to set up the claim you were working on before you went on your break and now you're setting up a new one, or you've just found yourself responsible for making sure a payment that has already failed three times somehow reaches its recipient this time...

Meanwhile you've an eye on the time, because at precisely x:15 you scheduled to go into comms, or go on a break, and you're scheduled to be logging back in at x:30. And if you're not going to make that schedule, you need to message scheduling so they can alter your schedule on the hop to keep adherence levels.

So far we have not been expected to conduct between calls tasks - we've just done a couple of one hour slots of scheduled tasks (working post). When we go live we are expected to work tasks between calls- scheduled emails, completing reviews, checking the evidence a customer has sent in, or accepting a contractor's quote or a supplier estimate of work.

Experienced handlers seem to cope, though with periods of high activity that can be a little stressful. I guess as I get more practiced and more things are instinctive, I'll speed up and get more done as I am logging the claim with the customer, rather than leaving a lot of it to the end when the call has ended.

There are usually a few periods of very low activity in call terms. You can sometimes go nearly an hour without a call coming through. Or it might just be a few seconds after you click your status to open for calls, after you've finished with a claim.

It's interesting and challenging, and at times quite fun. It's also intermittently terrifying. Like....seriously I have delegated authority within a network of legal and financial relationships? How the hell did that happen?

All this and you're managing an orchestra too?!

It sounds like you're far more diligent than many of the medical staff I've encountered recently. If I'd done my cheese-cutting job the way they run their wards I'd have had an arm off by now.

But you sound more challenged than overwhelmed, so that's good. And it keeps Carrot in the style to which he has become accustomed.

This is why our insurance claims department is constantly putting me on hold...

^WSS ... navigating those waters for Dan was/is a frikkin nightmare.

On the up side, once you get a handle on the system, job security sounds good. You go girl. :thumb:

:welcome: back!

Damn, girl, that sounds like a handful. No wonder you've been upstairs, instead of downstairs in Teh Cellar. Like Bruce said, though, once you get the hang of things and start getting a better grip on the system, you'll have them by the short and curlies in no time.

Work your work, Dana, just come downstairs every now and then.;)

Good to hear from you Dana! I know what you mean about jobs where there aren't enough hours in the day...my time in Higher Ed was just that. It takes all your mental energy all the time.

One day you'll look back and be all like "Pfffft, I got this!"

I'm curious, not suggesting anything but just curious, if let's say having a lawyer who specializes in shit like this would be worth having on retainer, someone who can just make the call and by his or her mere presence ramps the whole thing into "Let's fast track this shit because they're not fucking around."

Anonymous has something to say about this, I think.

Indeed I do.

During the course of my dealing with foreclosure proceedings with my bank, I was eventually served and the bank had gotten the ball rolling towards getting a court judgement. I still had the very remote possibility of being approved for a modification if I managed to get a $65K a year job within a month or so... Not likely.

I figured my best shot was to stall for time and so I found a lawyer who would represent me through out the proceedings for a flat rate. Our plan was to drag this out as long as we could so I had more time to find a FT job.

When we showed up for the first meeting with the bank's attorney's we left with the agreement that I would fill out, yet again, an ass load of paper work in aid of applying for another modification that would need to be reviewed, misplaced, bounced around and then denied. We set a date for the next meeting to be in mid to late October.

Three days after the meeting, the bank sent me a pre-approved provisional modification, where I need to make three trial payments, on time, and then I'm current, at a lower fixed interest rate, with an extended term capitalizing my unpaid interest.

I know if I hadn't gotten the lawyer, they wouldn't have made the offer.

Payment two is coming up and it's close but I'll make it.

So, I'm wondering if there is a 'not fucking around' effect that lawyers bring to these sorts of negotiations.

I think there is.

They put up all these hurdles in front of you and hope you will just give up. Enough people do give up that it works for them.

We're out of the game these days, not nearly as much weird stuff being done. No medical formulas replacing all food, no injectable B12. We do have a dual pill cam coming up in 2017, though. Those always get screwed up.

I suspect that health insurance is a little different to home insurance. I know pet insurance and motor insurance are quite different in terms of industry norms in how things are done. The way that risk is calculated and taken account of is a little different. There's even a lot of difference between the way insurance works for landlord property insurance versus homeowner property insurance.

The difference with health insurance, as with pet insurance is that there is an assumption that all policy holders will, at some point, need to claim, and that the rate of claim will increase with age. With home insurance there is an assumption that only a percentage of policy holders will need to claim, and that of policyholders who do need to claim, a percentage will claim one off, and a percentage will claim multiple times, and that a percentage will claim quite small, whilst a percentage will claim big.

Home insurance is supposed to be there if you need it, as long as there was an insurable event covered under your policy. Health insurance is supposed to be there when you need it.

I used to assume that insurance companies (home insurance, not health insurance) just looked for reasons to not pay out, but my experience, both as a customer who had to claim on pet insurance and now as a trainee claims handler (well, just claims handler now :P) is that the approach is more about precision than anything. The basic principle is that they set out, as an insurer, their appetite for risk, and offer cover for specified and generally defined perils and their effects, to specified limits and with an agreed excess and set of conditions. Most of those conditions are common sense - such as maintenance of a roof. In insurance terms, there is a vast difference between a storm of sufficient intensity damaging your roof, and a roof that hasn't been maintained in two decades, and the tiles of which are already loose, springing a leak from an average rainfall. The first is an unforeseen event, and the latter is a predictable consequence of not getting a roofer in.

The basic principle is to indemnify the customer - put them back in the place they were before the unforeseen event happened. That means sometimes, if there's enough wriggle room written into the policy, then best practice is to try to make it happen within the terms of the policy - would you class a hearing aid as a 'personal item' or a piece of 'technology and entertainment e.g audio device'? It isn't specifically mentioned as either...which means it isn't specifically excluded from either cover option.

I spend way more of my time (as do most of the handlers I have seen working) trying to make a claim happen than trying to knock it back.

Sometimes the indemnity mission can lead to things that might seem unfair, or maddeningly pedantic to some. Like if one chair in a matching set is damaged can't be repaired, or can be repaired but will not look the same as the remaining set of chairs - is it indemnifying the customer to completely renew the entire set? Are we then paying for a customer who has damaged a chair to have a complete upgrade of their furniture? On the other hand, if we restore them to the position of having a complete set of furniture, but one piece no longer matches the others, then have we actually indemnified them? They are no longer in the position of having a matching set of chairs ;p

Has anyone heard from John Sellers? I'm worried sick

Did you just...

I solled

Solled?

Did you shit out loud?!

yes. very loud. or snorted

I wish Urbane Guerilla was actively posting here this political season. themercenary too...

Me too.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

But not Jill and Starring_Emma? That's discrimination.

I discriminate.

How about Radar. I might be able to find him

zengum :/

I miss rkzenenrage. And the Merc.
I didn't always agree with them. Not personally or politically. But I felt that when they weren't making personal attacks they really added something to the Cellar.

Dang, gurrrl! You almost make it sound interesting!

Fixed that.

I miss Zengum.

And Merc.

Yeah Zengum. I'm in touch with his pal Casimendocina

Been worried about Busterb for awhile now.
Anyone in touch with him?

I think Buster was having computer issues , but, that's been a few months ago, now.

His profile page shows his last post June 30, but last activity on Oct 13.

I saw that also.

Now it says last activity 11/30/16 WTF busterb... Post please.

Danac hasn't been around much. Her last post was over a week ago. I know that's not very long. but I'm a little worried

That is so weird because last night i was thinking the same thing and made a.mental note to ask about her today.

Dana, please pick up the white courtesy phone (Airplane reference. )

(black courtesy phones matter too)

Dana is probably busy getting ready for the impending onslaught of insurance claims. What with reindeer and sleigh landing on people's rooftops, there's bound to be some damage.

I was wondering if she was dealing with a buttload of "oh no, all my expensive gifts were stolen from under the tree, you must replace them before the holiday or kittens will cry" claims :lol:

Bravo.:lol2:

She and I messaged a bit. She was, at that time, OK just busy as hell, crappy internet issues and still very upset about Sundae.
Just checked the date - 14 December. Shit, now I'm worrying too.

I haven't gotten a response to emails to Dana. :(

Try sending an email to Carrot Pilausson. The link is in the profile contact info.

In the subject line write Naked Lassie Pics!

Here ya go Carrot:

Dudes, it's been another 10 days, does anyone have contact details they could use to just check in, see she's OK? Please?

I sent her another email... nothing. :(

Dana :grouphug:

Yeah, where is Dana? :(

Just heard from Dana . She's OK but been busy and has crap Internet .

Sent by thought transference

Hi all - sorry to have worried you.
As Limes says - busy as hell and my useless $%^ing internet connection has been pantsed for most of the festive season.

It is currently working - hopefully it will continue to do so, because I think if I have to interact with the technical support team one more time I may get violent.

Work has been a bit mental - everybody's boiler chooses Christmas eve to spring a leak and fuck up their home for the holidays. Not to mention the spate of burglaries and drunk drivers ploughing into unsuspecting boundary walls.

Thank fuck Storm Barbara was a bit of a damp squib and didn't result in wall to wall storm damage claims.

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas and New Year - mine was mercifully quiet and peaceful. And in the end all the gifts I'd ordered online made it in time - so there's that :P

*smiles*

Oh forgot to add - Bruce, hon I didn't realise you'd emailed me. Personal emails are blocked at work, and I hate accessing on my mobile - and since I did all those survey things to get vouchers for Mum's Kindle my email is basically just a wall of spam - I bob on to see if there's anything urgent from time to time, but unless I know what i am looking for and can search it, things tend to get lost in the melee.