Human Resources are in my life and it isn’t good.

[rayinpenn]

I’m retired so HR shouldn’t still be part of my life but the are.
1. Before i retired about 2 years ago I asked HR what would my medical cost. I got couple some answers that didn’t make sense. Finally I sent a letter to the head of HR and they put me in touch with their best. She quoted $1,953 when i retired it actually was $2,700. Inflation. Thank god I only have to pay it for 6 months.

2. 1/31/2019 the last day of my employment coverage of medical changed from normal employee to retiree paying for same coverage. DS- A.K.A “Cool Hand” is sick and needs to see emergency care at college. When they provider calls the insurance company they say we don’t have coverage. Son goes home and tuffs it out.. I call- eventually they apologize I actually talk to the person that declined the service ..he apologizes.
I must say i was pretty angry ...

3. Today I get a letter saying the wife and son are covered and as I am Medicaid eligible I am not covered. Except i am 64.5 and am not eligible. I have a couple of medical issues and feel quite vulnerable. I call after 15 minutes -she (HR) cant explain it. “Don’t worry you are covered.” I am thinking certified letter to the head of HR.

HR still has my pension fund and should pay me around 4/1/2019. It is a significant sum. The money must move directly to my brokerage 401k or a taxable event will be triggered. Can’t they get it right? The unit I worked for multiple mistakes like that aren’t tolerated. There are processes in place to make sure they do not happen.

We are all human and make mistakes but some things are too important for screw ups...

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I ran a small business for many years...….If I had made either of these two errors I could have gotten sued til I lost my house.


Keep an eye on them. You are your own process to make sure that they do it right.


Good luck to you.

 

[JoeWras]

I was surprised by the number of "clean up" issues I had after retiring. It took a few months and was quite stressful. Now that I've used my insurance successfully and just got some time behind me and my end date do I finally feel like I can relax.

Good luck to you, ray, in your expected payment.

 

[rodi]

I was a murphy's law example case for canceled insurance.

1) transfer within the company from PA to CA. Different insurers. I choose the new provider and premiums are deducted from my paycheck. First time we have to use it - urgent care at Kaiser Permanente says we're not covered... They do the treatment (amoxycillan for a sick child with ear infection.) HR takes 3 weeks to get it straightened out... but has trouble backdating it so the visit in question is covered.

2) about 15 months later I give birth to second son. California required that disability insurance cover 6 weeks of the maternity leave. I try to pre-pay the rest of maternity leave insurance prior to my leaving to have the baby.... They (HR) don't want to do it till disability is over. So I'm still getting paychecks from my employer with insurance deducted from it. I have the baby, and 2 weeks later need to take it to a well baby visit.... Again, I'm told I don't have insurance. Turns out that (again) the company was deducting my portion of the premiums, but not paying the premiums to the insurer, Kaiser. Again - it takes several weeks for HR to get it straightened out. At first they say it's because I didn't pre-pay my premiums before leaving - but I was still getting paychecks at this point, with insurance premiums taken out.

I do pay the insurance premiums, through HR, for the unpaid portion of maternity leave. I think all is good...

3) after maternity leave, I go back to work and start drawing a paycheck again... Again, insurance premiums are being taken out of my pay. Again, I take the baby in for a well baby visit... again, insurance is cancelled again.

Oh... and lets not talk about how somehow, a year later, my vacation accrual started going down each pay period instead of going up. When I discovered it I'd lost about 3 weeks of vacation pay. We (HR & I) exchanged documents, copies of paystubs, spreadsheets... When they got to within 5 hours of my estimates (in their favor) I called uncle and let it go.

I still have a file folder of hard copies of EVERY paystub (20 years worth) from that company... In case HR decides to mess with me post retirement. Those paystubs stopped the excuses and lies.

 

[Souschef]

Dear Rodi,
I feel your pain. When I got ready to retire, I got 3 different estimates of my pension, from $600 a month to $1200 a month. I called them on it, and settled on $1180 a month.
Some of these HR people should be taken out and shot.
Your health insurance sounds like a problem I had with Blue Shield. I retired in January, and went to the SS office with the form filled out by employer stating I had health coverage until January. i got a welcome letter from Blue Shield, and then got another letter stating I was not covered.
The idiots there said since I had not done it during open enrollment I was not covered. It took 3 months to straighten it out!

 

[nwsteve]

Unfortunately, I have learned that anything requiring numbers and HR to use is a risky event for getting to the actual numerically correct answer. Usually, first response is of the variety--"we will look into it and see what looks right". Such responses are your first indication you must sharpen yours and HR's pencil.

 

[Dtail]

Worked with HR quite a bit in my former life. Anytime numbers were involved, it was not a pretty situation.
They did get my voluntary severance correct, although didn't know I could file for unemployment simultaneously.

 

[candrew]

Some of these HR people should be taken out and shot.

I know that you are speaking metaphorically, but in light of violence almost routinely finding its way into the workplace nowadays....

Having spent a 35 year career in a health system megacorp as a middle manager, I can sympathize with you and the level of frustration and anger that HR depts. can engender.

 

[target2019]

Human resources is MIA at my location. Boss asked me to email them about going to P/T, and discuss any changes in benefits. No response and I followed up. After a few days, the response was, "There's nothing to discuss, unless you have benefits questions."

 

[Col. Klink]

Another example of why w*rk sucks. The rank and file of this HR dept. probably hate their j*b, can't retire themselves, and could care less about the "lucky" retiree. Plus, the retiree no longer works there so why should they expend their limited human capital on the lucky retiree when I, the HR staffer, have been given 60 hours a week of tasks to complete in 40 hours, and I have been told that I absolutely can't get any OT to do the work because the company does not have the money.

Yes, I am stereotyping. To the OP, it will work out, but keep vigilant with these guys and congratulations on your retirement. Don't look back once you get the benefits you have earned.

 

[folivier]

I feel your pain! When I retired I was assured that my retiree healthcare would transition over. I (well my DW) kept copies of everything I signed. They did not transition me to retiree HC! When I first called they said I never signed up. I pulled out the papers and said I'll send them a 2nd copy. They said no problem they probably have them misfiled somewhere. Duh! "you got 1 job to do!"

 

[JoeWras]

I feel your pain! When I retired I was assured that my retiree healthcare would transition over. I (well my DW) kept copies of everything I signed. They did not transition me to retiree HC! When I first called they said I never signed up. I pulled out the papers and said I'll send them a 2nd copy. They said no problem they probably have them misfiled somewhere. Duh! "you got 1 job to do!"

In defense of my Megacorp, for retiree health, they have a nice web site where all this can be monitored. They signed me up over the phone and the next day the status was updated.

COBRA, however, was farmed to a third party and the status there was very opaque.

 

[fh2000]

I reported this earlier. Out of 100 maddening stories, there maybe one lucky happy ending from their errors.

DW resigned and set her last date on 1/4/19. Therefore her retirement date should be 1/5/19. Somehow HR set her retirement date as 1/4/19, therefore short changed her one last day salary.

After numerous calls to old HR, they finally corrected it and paid that one last day salary, and she also got another paycheck with almost one month of salary. Turns out it is due to California 'Waiting Time Penalty' law that company needs to keeping paying the salary until the error is corrected. HR finally corrected the error 27 days after her last day.

 

[MOSAT]

Sorry to hear about your problem and hope they are quickly resolved.

I never had much problem with HR either with insurance or payroll, the little problems I did have caused an inordinate amount of pain. (Don't mess with a person's pay or benefits). DW, fortunately took care of all the phone calls necessary to straighten things out, I don't have much patience for such bureaucratic BS.

One of the few times I needed to call I was put in touch with "Heather" who proceeded to tell me not to worry about it and "I'll look into it and get back to you." (cheery voice and hang up.) What little information she divulged didn't seem right so a few hours later I called back. Got "Hellen". Re-told her the problem/concern. Then you heard it in the background, the staccato of rapid keyboard strokes which were absent from my call with Heather, 2 minutes later with a conference call with Heather, initiated by Hellen, problem solved, email popped up with confirmation as Heather hung up.

I guess it just shows there is competency in all departments, ya just gotta hope you get the ones that work.

 

[gwraigty]

I never had much problem with HR either with insurance or payroll, the little problems I did have caused an inordinate amount of pain. (Don't mess with a person's pay or benefits). DW, fortunately took care of all the phone calls necessary to straighten things out, I don't have much patience for such bureaucratic BS.

Just wondering if it's standard practice these days for an employer to talk to anyone other than the employee about such things? When I did payroll from 1986-1990, I was allowed to speak with a spouse about an employee's paycheck. But that was also before HIPPA and other privacy related concerns.

 

[Rianne]

First, I did work in HR many years ago. I feel your pain and there is no excuse. When HR makes an error(s) it affects your family, income, HC, vacation, sick leave no question. IMHO, HR has a responsibility to track these errors and figure out who's not trained properly and trace the domino effect of those mistakes. We had part time people answering phone calls. They're supposed to transfer to senior HR, but they take the initiative to answer questions they have no idea what they're about. It might start with one misinformed phone call, snowball into a mess of back checking the detail, then correcting it. That's why many mega corps contract out HR. There's too much liability when this stuff gets screwed up. I'm surprised no one sued, but then attorney's fees...it seems not worth it.

I did benefit from an HR screw up when the international dept. went kaput because China could make our products faster and cheaper. I worked in international and got downsized. I kept getting paychecks after the severance period was up. I kept them, called HR, they said that was correct, so I deposited them. I continued to get paychecks for 2+ months. It was like HR didn't want to hassle with it and said that's correct, go ahead and deposit. The checks were already accounted for, taxes, insurance, SS, medicare, short term long term disability already taken out. Haha, like they thought...too complicated...keep it.

 

[ivinsfan]

Oddly enough I know someone who's been working on a platform to make HR stuff like this completely computer driven so the employees do all their own HR stuff on line.

They've rolled out some programming for several large companies. It seems to be gaining some acceptance in Europe but not so much domestically yet.

What say you retired HR people or mega-corp people, thumbs down or thumbs up?