Retirement Circus

I am starting to understand why some people do not retire. No, I am not getting bored or feeling unnecessary. I am getting frustrated. Aggravated. Intensely angry at the treatment by the company who bought out my former company and by the company/companies which handle the administration of my retirement and benefits.

Next month (November), for a period of some 14 days, I will have the opportunity to choose a different health coverage option then my current one. If there is an alternative option. There might be. There are indications that there might be. But I don't know for sure because...

I don't have all the information.

I don't have that information because they have not sent it to me. They have not sent it to me because... well, I don't know why.

They believe that I am an "eBenefits Participant". No, that wasn't a typo. there is a lower case "e" in front of the upper case "B". I know this because I received a postcard in the mail (US Mail, "snailmail", USPS, etc) calling me that.

I have never received one email from the company or the companies handling the administration of my retirement benefits since my retirement. I have never been able to log in to any retirement website.

But because I really disliked the health plan, administered by Aetna, that was dumped on me two years ago when SBC took over ATT (and started using that name) I decided I had best see if I had some choice in the matter.

Now, my choices are always going to be limited. I live in a small town and I may be the only ATT retiree in the county. So my health plan may not be known to the medical folks around here. I can expect that. I suspected I might have trouble when the last time I called Aetna for information about what doctors were in my network, they couldn't find my ZIP code and had no idea what, or where, Sebring was.

So, I go to the web site suggested in that postcard. I find I cannot log in. Probably because I have never logged in before. But, oddly enough, I could not establish a log in because they had some information about me they had somehow gathered from the ether. I located an email contact where I could request assistance and emailed my plea for assistance.

They complied with a reset of my password and left me to guess at my login. But I eventually figured it out and got logged in. This was a "Global Login" which turned out to not be so global. It got me into a page from which I could presumably link to other web pages where I could get information about my health benefit options and choices.

But I had to log into those. With a different login. I found the right login name (different than my first one) but had no idea what the password might be. Surprisingly, I was told I didn't have one. Password, that is. And then I managed to register for what may have been the first time.

Yet, after registering and logging in, I found I had a profile. In that profile, I found I had an "other email address" which was the one I had before retiring and moving here (ie, three years old!). I had no "preferred email address" nor could I find a way to add it (though I was informed that I could do so while viewing my profile). They did have my current, correct, postal address.

Anyway, within these web pages, I was continually told I could review my choices for health coverage for 2010 and even get a glimpse of how I would be entering any changes, if I so chose to change anything. But that never materialized. Each link would take me to another page which had no information except generalized info but which would offer me a link to another page which they promised would provide the stuff I needed. Except those links either brought me back to the original page or reported a Page Not Found error.

I sent off another email to another email address asking for assistance and was directed to a toll free number and the first web site address.

Any bets on which path I will take?