United Healthcare - Cannot speak with a live person in US

[EricW236758]

As soon as I became a member with United Healthcare, I began to receive phone calls from a third party company affiliated with United Healthcare known as BeneLynk.  The callers from BeneLynk seemed to know certain pieces of critical information I had given to United Healthcare, but they didn't seem to have my home address, income, or date of birth.  

The calls from BeneLynk didn't seem to be very professional, and they were very aggressive in their attempts to get me to sign up for additional services, so I asked one of the rep's from BeneLynk to send me an email outlining their pitch to me.  However, when I got the email things didn't look right, so I tried to call United Healthcare to report the issue.

I called the number listed on the back of my card, and then I had to wait an extended period of time before finally speaking to someone in a call center in South Asia, and my call actually got disconnected once or twice during the process.    When my call was finally picked up, the audio volume of the call was extremely low, and I suspect that the rep I was speaking with was not wearing his mouthpiece in front of his mouth as a form of belligerent compliance.    

Eventually United Healthcare emailed me a form to fill out, and then after that I stopped receiving telephone calls from BeneLynk.  Also, I wish to point out that the telephone calls from BeneLynk appeared to be originating from within the US, with relatively good audio quality, but United Healthcare's call center appears to be located in a remote part of the world, with very poor phone service.  

Since the above incident I've had one or two occasions in which I needed to speak with someone with United Healthcare's customer service, but the only options seem to be to speak with a call center in Asia, or to use the online chat function to communicate with an AI.  It seems that United Healthcare has deliberately built a firewall between its members in the US, and its own staff, thereby making it impossible for its members to receive quality customer service from someone who is able to effectively communicate in English. 

I would like to also point out that all of the emails I have received from United Healthcare appear to have been generated by an AI, the emails themselves contain nothing but generic boilerplate statements, no attempt at customer service, and whenever I reply to an email sent to me by United Healthcare, no one ever gets back to me.

It's clear that United Healthcare isn't the least bit concerned about providing good customer service care to its members, and instead what they do is they make it impossible for members to communicate with anyone who is actually an employee of United Healthcare.  What sort of a business philosophy is this? 

[GailL1 · Accepted solution]

@EricW236758 

Benelynk is a patient advocate type of service that works with Medicare Advantage insurers to get their beneficiaries onto Medicaid.   Are they any good, are they bonified ?  IDK  - 

Heed the warning from CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) - if you need a patient advocate:

CMS.gov - Find a Patient Advocate 

As far as talking to a representative of a company directly about anything - with the advent of AI and how big companies now are - that ship has sailed.  That goes for all types of businesses not just medical oriented ones. 

But you might be happier if you were working with a smaller company - they may still have some customer interactions - they might not be quite there yet with AI but it definitely is a goal -  to save time and money of course.

Be very leery of those in sheep’s clothing - wanting to help you.