I wrote a post about my unimpressive experience with ICBC’s enhanced care model a few months ago. I guess you could call this my additional addendum specific to their ineptitude around tracking and administering income replacement benefits.
On January 10th, I received the following by email:
I have an update regarding your income benefit. The Benefits Team has informed that there was an error with previous income calculation as they applied incorrect weekly LTD benefit rate. This created a $2107.67 overpayment.
Moving forward your payments will be issued every four weeks in the amount of $465.58 - starting May 16th - to catch up on the overpayment. Please see below the calculation as provided by the Benefit Analyst. Do let me know if you have any questions regarding this.
Note: It’s probably important to reiterate here, that these benefits are paid by ICBC on top of the LTD I’ve been collecting, to total 90% of my net income (including LTD), when you have injuries resulting from a vehicular crash.
there was no apology, no offer to discuss a repayment schedule – nothing. To be clear, it isn’t the actual money involved that bothers me. We are financially secure. The fact that she couldn’t even offer the slightest concern for the mistake ICBC made is what really sits badly with me. What if we did need that money or were in a more precarious financial position? I won’t even get into how bad the financial calculation example she provided was, let alone that we had been getting about $715 biweekly and will now get nothing until May 16th, when we will suddenly drop to $465 every four weeks to reflect the corrected amount. How lovely. I am fine with getting the correct amount, but not so much with their approach.
Luckily, my wife is at least part financial bloodhound and, once I shared the email with her, she had plenty of questions, which she sent to ICBC, and to which she got absolutely no reply. If it wasn’t clear to me before, it is now. ICBC doesn’t give a shit, regardless of how much they profess that their only goal is your complete recovery (even this is only so they can get you off the books when you return to work).
After receiving the email above in January, I asked it there were other, less drastic options, as opposed to just losing benefits for four months, due to their error. My recovery specialist said that they could, in fact, do the overpay clawback slower and still make partial payments, but of course never offered that until I asked. Again, they’re supposed to be providing income replacement benefits, wanted to stop all payments for four months to clawback their error, and then offered something better only when I asked.
In the meantime, I informed her that the EI sickness benefits ($61 a week, LOL) they made me apply for would run out a few weeks ago, and that I’d also accepted early retirement from my employer.
Then on June 19th, I received the following by email:
I have an update regarding your income benefit.
The benefits team has asked to skip the next 2 payments (June 20th and July 4th). The payments will restart on July 18th and will be revaluated by mid-August when your retirement is scheduled for.
Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this.
Um, yeah, of course I have fucking questions, but I’ll stick to the less insulting ones. It’s important to note, that this was all the email said. No accounting of where the overpay clawback is at, just clearly that they want to make sure they are whole before I retire. It’s also worth noting that by my back of the napkin calculations, the $2100 overpay should have been nearly repaid by me at this point. I said as much in my reply to them.
Perhaps it would be helpful if you included a statement of where the overpay clawback is at so we can be on the same page. It's not very helpful when we have no idea where the account stands at for the overpay clawback. By my calculations we should be nearly done.
Also, it would be helpful as well if you indicated what the payments would be when they restarted in addition to providing an indication of where the claw back is at right now.
Their final email is the chef’s kiss:
My apologies about this.
I have followed up with the benefits team as unfortunately they made an error.
I can provide you with this revised calculation noting overpayment is currently at $270.80 after a payment issued today of $116.39.
Your next payment on July 4th will be issued in the amount of $159.76 (current biweekly rate of $430.56 minus overpayment $270.80).
The subsequent payment on July 18th will be issued at the full biweekly benefit rate of $430.56.
At least I finally got an apology, but it’s worth noting that it came after a string of errors. I still have nearly two months until retirement, and if they’d never bothered sending either of the last two emails, the payback would have been long complete by then.
So, to summarize:
- ICBC “benefits team” made an error resulting in a $2100 overpay
- ICBC suggests suspending all payments to correct their error
- ICBC then confirms they can do 50% payments only when asked
- ICBC then wants to get overpay back by suspending two payments
- ICBC then admits to another mistake and effectively says “never mind” with only $270 left to recover
- at ICBC, confusion clearly reigns supreme