CaliforniaChoice

I have called a lot of customer service representatives, but I had never come across such rude AND useless customer service until today. We got the new insurance packet from my dad's work called CaliforniaChoice, which at first sounds amazing: you can choose your health insurance plan to fit your needs! Yes, that is amazing, but that is precisely their downfall. The customer service representatives were as useful as a sack of rotting potatoes.

I, like most people who are not in the insurance business, do not understand all the minute details and differences between the plans and benefits. I even did my homework by reading through the package they sent and browsing through articles online. There were two particular options I was confused about: both require zero contributions from our family, zero deductibles, and one of the differences is the amount of copay ($25 vs $40). I wanted to know why anybody would want to choose HMO40 over HMO25 (why would anyone want to pay more every time he/she visits the doctor's office? there's got to be a difference). I was looking for an answer like "Families with children or the elderly who frequently visit the hospital may be more inclined to choose XX" or "In the long run, XX plan would be more beneficial..." But no. All I get is "It is up to the customer to choose what he wants." I responded "Yes, I understand it is up to the customer. But why would anyone want to choose a plan with a higher copay than one with a low copay?" He responds "It's whatever the customer wants." I hang up after this 5 minute exchange of me trying to rephrase the question and him responding flatly and condescendingly "It's up to the person." If he had been more friendly, I might have been more okay with the fact that he had been completely useless. Frustrated, I try calling again in about 15 minutes. Different representative, same experience.

In Summary: Yes. I know it's up to the customer. But if I knew what I were doing, I wouldn't be calling customer service in the first place. It's as if they're just trained to say "It's up to the customer" because that is their whole business principle; "Choose your health plan to fit your needs!" I thought customer service representatives were supposed to know what they were doing and be as helpful as they can. If all they can do is regurgitate their company's motto back at me over and over again, then why not have an automated recording of that instead of paying people to do a useless job?