So I called United Health Care to check
and be sure about whether my Shingrix shingles vaccine would be $0 cost as I had read on the Medicare.gov website for all part D plans. I wanted to be very sure given the high expense of this vaccine if not covered. Over the course of well over an hour on the phone with two different reps here is what went down. The linguistically challenged rep first asked me to spell it. No problem so I did. Then she put me on hold for a long time. When she came back she told me that I needed "prior authorization" from my doctor. I told her she was mistaken. She assured me she was not.
She then asked me how many milligrams was the dosage I was looking for. Unsure of whether to laugh or cry at such a question I did hold it together and asked her if she actually knew what a vaccine is. She grew quiet as though I had offended her. I asked again and added to it a request to know whether she would ask the same question for a flu shot. She explained to me that I either had to tell her how many milligrams of Shingrix I was looking for or how many milligrams per liter. Because I was now over 20 minutes into this call I asked to speak to a supervisor. I was then on hold for over 15 minutes. Nobody ever came on the line.
I hung up and called back hoping to get someone else and I did. Of course there is the lengthy identity verification process to go through before the similarly linguistically challenged customer service rep asked me what I wanted. I explained. The rep asked if she could put me on hold. I fearfully agreed. After about 15 minutes she came back on the line and explained to me that Shingrix was a chicken pox vaccine and she wanted to know if I had been vaccinated as a child.
While technically in the right ballpark I was surprised that she would ask me about being vaccinated for chicken pox as a child since she had my age info in front of her and the chicken pox vaccine wasn't around when I was a kid. But OK so she forgot she was talking to someone on Part D or whatever. She told me that my doctor would have to give a prior authorization and my co-pay would be $47.00 per shot. I told her she was wrong. She told me she was right. I told her to check with a supervisor. I went on hold for another 15 minutes. She came back on and told me that there was no prior authorization needed and that I was correct that there was $0 for any cost to me.
All of that just to get a very simple answer to a very simple question and verify that yes it is covered by UHC and yes there is no cost. Raking in the money by the truckload and not spending it on training so that you have knowledgeable customer service people and failing to select personnel able to communicate clearly with the market they serve.
Some might think I'm knocking the foreign accents but I am not. Bless everyone who wants to work but when a company places people in situations of customer service interaction on the phone the first priority is that they can be clearly understood in order to facilitate effective communication. When they don't they are doing a disservice to both the customer service personnel and the customers. This results from corporate mismanagement and greed and as we all know it is rampant in the business world.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Both CVS & Walgreens have that covered! 
I got my first shingrix shot back in April, and almost missed my window for the second shot.
Eff UHC up one side and down the other. 
