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bad news, good news 2006 January 10 23:22

Posted by diamond in : Work, Random , trackback

Bad news: my stomach is even more unsettled today, not gonna be moving if i can help it.

Good news: it looks like my eyes will have cleared up in the next day or two, meaning i don’t need to stay on the antibiotics (yes, my gp did tell me to just use them as long as necessary).

Various other newses: I’ve been with vhi since i started working in tecnomen, back in august 2000. After i left the company, i opted to continue my health insurance cover. Last year i spent a bit of time looking through the various vhi schemes, and chose to continue with plan b option as vhi said it covered more outpatient fees, which i knew i was going to need. Near the end of the insurance year, i requested that they send me out the pack with the claim form and detailed information regarding what they cover etc.

I’ll summarise this as ‘they should be shot’. They claim an excess of €250 (iirc) is in effect. They say they’ll pay up to €50 (again, iirc) per outpatient consultant visit. I had seen a consultant 4 times, for about €110 per visit. You do the calculations ((110*4) - 250) and you come up with a figure of €190 that i’ll get back. It’s not great, but ok. Hah. Then you re-read the conditions. The excess isn’t in relation to how much you’ve paid. It’s subtracted from how much they’d pay. Utter wankers. Do the math again ((50*4) - 250) and you come up with a big fat €0.

So. I rang vhi last week and cancelled my policy (something i’ve been meaning to do for a few months). I’m in the process of signing up with bupa. Not because the premium is cheaper (though the ~€100 or so less is a nice incentive), but because they have a €1 excess on out-patient expenditure. When the nice lady in vhi asked why i was leaving them, i explained my feelings about their excess handling, to which she matter of factly replied that “yes, it’s subtracted from the benefit” in a tone of voice that suggested that i was highly misguided to ever have expected anything different. She tried to sell me another policy, i explained that i’d done fairly detailed reading into the terms and conditions and that no, i wasn’t interested. She then told me that the scheme i was signing up for with bupa wouldn’t cover private hospitals. At the time i couldn’t remember the details so i just told her i didn’t care. After double-checking however, that’s a bald-faced lie. Bupa don’t cover all private hospitals, but they have a list on their website of the ones they do cover, which includes all the hospitals in limerick, and most of the ones in dublin etc. Gah. In summary, sigh @ vhi, whoopa for bupa (ain’t rhyming great?).

In other jumping-ship news, i wanted to switch my mobile phone network to three. Unfortunately, while they offer 2.5G service, you can only use their sims in a 3G phone, which i don’t have, don’t see any need for, and don’t plan on spending large sums of money to obtain. They only sell one nokia (and really, unless they offered treos, i wouldn’t buy a non-nokia anyway. it’s just not worth the hassle), and one the temptingly nice price plan, which was the whole reason i wanted to change anyway, and it’s €159. And it’s not even a nokia phone that i’d want.

Wishlist features for a new nokia, if i were in the market for one:
- decent (>5 day) battery life
- 3G (purely because it would allow me to switch to three. not because i care at all about the fancy (read: expensive) 3g features)
- decent calendaring capabilities (this i could detail at length ,-)
- symbian os
- buisness-level address book (i.e. multiple numbers per entry, with physical and virtual address capabilities)
- comes with a pineapple (well, why not?)

I’ve spent a bit of time looking through nokia’s website for such a phone, and have given up after being overwhelmed by the torrent of bling they’re churning out. I can’t even specify the features i want and see what phones come close. They do have a very ghey selection wizard on their site which is intended to fulfill that role, but it only allows you to select 2 features, out of a really pitiful list. ‘Java technology’. Yeah, i really desperately urgently need that. “It’s like a phone, only slower!”.

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