Bite Me
Today's mail brought with it a letter from MCS Claim Services, Inc. on behalf of the cancer center where I spend a lot of my time (and my insurance companies' money).
It says, in part:
"We have been retained by the hospital to collect from you the above balance due. Please send payment for the full balance due to our office."
MCS is clearly a top-flight operation. I imagine that they are the premier debt-collection agency on the planet.
They are so premier that they printed their letter on a dot-matrix printer. These are exceedingly rare—veritable collector's items—owned by only the most discriminating businesspeople in the world. I imagine that MCS purchased its dot-matrix printer at auction, using the millions of dollars they have garnered through their efficient debt-collection techniques.
These techniques are so efficient that it took only 20 days for their letter to travel from one spot on the land mass known as Long Island (their offices in the county of Nassau) to another (my home in the county of Kings), a total distance of 29.8 miles. Those folks at MCS are smart, too! They not only tracked down my current address (after, I assume, spending hours combing through the two or three Knower entries in the phone book)—they also found my previous address. In fact, they used both on their letter—the street name from my current address and the city and zip from the last place we lived.
I bet the mail carriers just love the folks over at MCS for keeping them on their toes and making their job FUN! I'm sure those clever collectors at MCS can't remember the last time they stumped a mail carrier with a nonexistent address, but they keep trying! Sounds like a winning premise for a new reality show to me!
Now I realize that the cancer center has shelled out well over $100,000 in medical care for little ol' me, and I can imagine that they might be a little irritated at not getting reimbursed right on time. You know how slow those pesky insurance companies can be! So I can completely understand why they would want to engage the services of an industry leader like MCS to promptly recoup some of their substantial investment in my good health. And I can also see why it would make economic sense to do that right away, instead of sticking with the old-economy practice of first sending me a bill.
Because I'll tell you right now, if the cancer center had written and asked me to settle up for the $24.30 that MCS is now asking me to pay, I would have filed the lawsuit first and asked questions later.
It says, in part:
"We have been retained by the hospital to collect from you the above balance due. Please send payment for the full balance due to our office."
MCS is clearly a top-flight operation. I imagine that they are the premier debt-collection agency on the planet.
They are so premier that they printed their letter on a dot-matrix printer. These are exceedingly rare—veritable collector's items—owned by only the most discriminating businesspeople in the world. I imagine that MCS purchased its dot-matrix printer at auction, using the millions of dollars they have garnered through their efficient debt-collection techniques.
These techniques are so efficient that it took only 20 days for their letter to travel from one spot on the land mass known as Long Island (their offices in the county of Nassau) to another (my home in the county of Kings), a total distance of 29.8 miles. Those folks at MCS are smart, too! They not only tracked down my current address (after, I assume, spending hours combing through the two or three Knower entries in the phone book)—they also found my previous address. In fact, they used both on their letter—the street name from my current address and the city and zip from the last place we lived.
I bet the mail carriers just love the folks over at MCS for keeping them on their toes and making their job FUN! I'm sure those clever collectors at MCS can't remember the last time they stumped a mail carrier with a nonexistent address, but they keep trying! Sounds like a winning premise for a new reality show to me!
Now I realize that the cancer center has shelled out well over $100,000 in medical care for little ol' me, and I can imagine that they might be a little irritated at not getting reimbursed right on time. You know how slow those pesky insurance companies can be! So I can completely understand why they would want to engage the services of an industry leader like MCS to promptly recoup some of their substantial investment in my good health. And I can also see why it would make economic sense to do that right away, instead of sticking with the old-economy practice of first sending me a bill.
Because I'll tell you right now, if the cancer center had written and asked me to settle up for the $24.30 that MCS is now asking me to pay, I would have filed the lawsuit first and asked questions later.
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 7:21 PM
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