I’ve finally come to accept the fact that I need glasses, and I decided to go to LensCrafters. I don’t have my insurance policy in front of me, but I do remember that I have $200 worth of vision coverage. My question here isn’t about what coverage I actually have, but about what I was told at the eyeglass store.
Before going, I called my local LensCrafters. Oscar answered, and I asked, “Do you accept my insurance?” and then I told him the name of my insurance.
Oscar said “Yes, we do. Would you like to make an appointment for today?”
I went in, had my exam, and talked with someone regarding lenses and frames. (I decided to wait on ordering the frames and lenses until my wife could come and give her opinion). The sales agent asked “So how will you pay for the exam?”, and I said that I’ve got insurance, and would you run it through. She said, “No, we’re giving you a five dollar discount because you have that insurance”. And I asked that when I actually pick out the lenses and frames and purchase them, will you run it through, and she said “No, you can fill out a reimbursement form with your insurance company”. [Note: the above is a shortened version of a longer conversation, involving both the sales agent and the store manager].
I fully admit that I’m not the sharpest needle on the cactus when it comes to figuring out the complexities of insurance, but my simple question is, did Oscar just directly lie to me when I called to asked if they accept my insurance? Isn’t it obvious from my question what is meant?
I always figured “do you take my insurance” to mean “will you do the paperwork on your side and get the money from them instead of me doing the paperwork to get the money”.
Either the guy who answered you doesn’t understand what the phrase means, he was lying, or the girl behind the counter is dumber than a sack of wet mice.
There’s sales talk and then there’s sales talk. It was misleading, at best, and a lie at worst.
They don’t take insurance, in that they don’t accept it as payment or do the paperwork so you can apply for it. Their products and services qualify for your insurance, but since the question was if they take it or not, they answered the question wrong.
I’ve always bought my glasses at LensCrafters (since I was a wee lad of 8) and the insurance discount was always done by the store as a discount on the purchase price.
Did you ask your insurance company if LensCrafters is a place whose service they will cover?
Not knowing the specifics of your plan, I would guess that the person on the phone recognized the name of your insurance carrier, and assumed that the services you needed would be covered to some degree. By relying on the answer given to you, having only provided the name of the insurance carrier, it seems to me that you also assumed the manner in which the claim would be taken care of, if at all.
I had VSP insurance I believe. I visited their website, checked for in-network providers, and called one. I also asked the person that answered if they accepted VSP, they practically responded “Hell yeah! That insurance is awesome”. They asked for my social, which was my account number, looked me up, and confirmed coverage.
I went in, had my eye exam, and they said that my vision was still pretty good. I could get glasses, but it would have meant the difference between being able to see just fine, and being able to read the scores of the games better from across a bar. I entertained their presentation because I knew that my plan would pay something like $200 towards a qualifying type of purchase. Of course they pretty much only showed me $400 designer frames, and almost balked at showing me the less expensive ones. I didn’t buy anything, but my exam was covered, that’s really the only reason I went in the first place. I didn’t have to submit a claim, they just took down my info, no bill either.
Back to your issue. Did you find out if your Insurance company is going to accept a direct claim from that provider?
Most likely the case is that they do, in fact, accept your insurance. When it came time for you to pay, you pulled out your insurance card, they adjusted the bill to the price they negotiated with your insurance company (which in this case was $5.00 less then the normal price) and you would pay that. Then you would go home and put in a claim with your insurance company who would reimburse you. So yes, they do accept your insurance, they just don’t do the legwork for you.
If they didn’t accept your insurance, you would have paid full price and if you put in a claim with your insurance company they probably would have done one of two things. Either flat out denied the claim or accepted it as an out-of-network provider. How they handle out-of-network claims (without preapproval) would be in the book you received when you first starting using them (most likely they would have covered with a percentage of it or it would have been put towards a very high deductable).
Assuming this is the case, he didn’t lie, but he could have said “Yes, we do accept that insurance, but you’ll have to put in the claim yourself” or something along those lines.
Alternately, one can use “dumb as a sack of hair”/“dumb as a sack of hammers.” I prefer the latter when dealing with someone who’s aggressive ignorance could actually cause bodily harm.