Another true Dominus story...and not just a FOAF tale. When I was working in an office at one point, we got a call from a 67 year old woman who was very upset. I was working as a troubleshooter for a major insurance firm, and whenever things would break down I would be the one that contacted all of the lawyers, doctors, hospitals, and clients to find out what went wrong and patch things up.

This woman was very upset. As with most insurance policies, there was a statute of limitations on filing claims. They had to be filed within 3 years of the date of service in order to be eligible for reimbursement. Well she had just been going through her things and found several thousand dollars worth of bills from an emergency room and time was running out. She had two days to get them to us or the money would be forfeited.

She asked if they would be received in time if she mailed them and I told her: “Probably not. Most postal service times can be anywhere from 2 to 14 days...sometimes longer.” If she did it that way she would really be taking her chances. She asked if she could use that “Federal Express” overnight service. I told her that she could, but that had it's own problems. First of all it was really expensive and secondly while they claim an overnight guarantee, all the “guarantee” covers is the cost of the mailing, not the value of the contents for that purpose. So if they delivered them late they would not really have any liability as the contents of the delivery would be valued at zero.

However, I asked her if she could fax the papers to us...that a fax of the forms would be just as good as a mailed copy. “Is that when you send the papers over the phone?” she asked.

“Exactly.” I said. “If you fax them I can make sure they get to claims right away. How soon can you do it?”

She was delighted and said she would do it right now. So I went to the fax machine. Nothing came through.  Waited a while. Another fax showed up, but it wasn't hers. I delivered that one, then came back but it still hadn't showed up. So I called her to make sure she dialed the number right.

“Oh, yes.” she said. “That's the number I used.”

“Well how long did it take them to go through?”

“Not long. Right away.”

I told her I didn't get them and that she should send them again. She said that would be fine and so I went back over to the fax machine to wait some more. Still nothing.

I called her back. She insisted she was using the right number, so I knew something else had to be wrong. I said: “Ma'am, could you please tell me what you are doing, step-by-step, to fax me your papers?”

“Alright. First I took all the papers and I made sure they were together with the forms you told me to have.”

“Uh huh.”

“Then I took the papers and forms and put them in a neat stack.”

“Right.”

“Then I lifted up my phone, put it on top of the stack of papers, and dialed the number you gave me.”

I fucking hate clueless old people.