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  • Benefits enrollment - unethical/illegal behavior by my employer?

    I suppose I should be grateful to work for a company that offers benefits at all, but this is way strange.

    It's enrollment time for people who work at companies that offer benefits. Where I work, it's the same old drill: If you want to keep the same plans as the prior year, you don't have to do a thing. But if you are making changes, buying vacation days, or wish to put money in a flexible spending plan for 2012, you have to enroll.

    On Monday morning, after not having received their packages at home like they were expecting following a heads-up e-mail from HR, employees got an innocuous-looking e-mail in plain text saying it's time to sign up for benefits. The e-mail came from a company no one had ever heard of. There was no reference to our company name and no company logo. There was a link to click on. The e-mail looked like a classic spam or a phishing attempt, so most people just deleted it.

    I'm the employee communications person, and thinking it was indeed a phishing scam that I needed to warn people about, I forwarded it to a contact in HR just to be sure. She told me it was legit, from our new benefits administration vendor. It's one thing to get a new vendor that doesn't do things the same way the old one did. But worse, the communication would be strictly electronic and looked like spam. Wow.

    It gets better (or worse, actually). Regardless of people's past choices, the system is defaulting in two areas to more expensive options. It assumes we are all smokers and charges an extra $23 per pay period (bi-weekly). No matter how many times you try, you cannot get it to change you to a non-smoker. It also defaults all participants to a purchase of additional life insurance worth four times their annual salary (about $15 per pay period for me). Edits to this may or may not take.

    Again, these changes are happening despite prior communications which specifically state you do not have to do anything to keep prior year’s elections.

    Inquiries with HR have been met with "We're sending your comments along to so-and-so." Yeah, that really helps.

    It's bad enough that the company refuses to send employees any written information about something this important, and instead sends an e-mail that virtually everyone deleted as spam/scam.

    But defaulting everyone to more expensive, unwanted choices and not telling us -- is there some sort of recourse for that?

  • #2
    Contact the company's admin office & get that nonsense stopped.

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    • #3
      What other management and HR contacts do you have? Because they should also be informed. And (if it won't bite you in the ass), you should ask fellow employees to complain to HR as well. HR manages employee benefits, they need to get their act together.
      A lion however, will only devour your corpse, whereas an SC is not sated until they have destroyed your soul. (Quote per infinitemonkies)

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      • #4
        People have been advised

        I have contacted HR and I have called the Benefits admin vendor. The vendor says they don't know why the defaults are what they are except that is the way they are. I presume that the defaults are set to whatever the company tells them to set them to.

        The HR people have not answered, except to send out a follow up e-mail that "encourages" employees to check their elections. Sorry that is not good enough.

        Bottom line: The Decision Guide says you don't have to do anything to keep your benefits as is, and that is an out-and-out lie. If you don't do anything, you get nailed with a $23 biweekly surcharge on your medical and a charge for 4x salary "optional" life insurance (in my case $15). I'd have been nailed with $38/per pay period in additional charges.

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        • #5
          My company has something called a "wellness credit" or some such. To qualify you must see a doctor for an annual physical and meet some other requirements--I assume not using tobacco is one of them. But you have to have proof you meet all the requirements.

          This would be the only explanation I'd have for the default to the higher rates and it may not apply to your specific case. I have no explanation for the defaulting on the life insurance.

          Even if I'm keeping the same benefits, I always complete the form every year. This way I know what I signed up for and what I'll be charged for them.

          Obviously your company hasn't got its shit together on the transition to the new benefits vendor.
          Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil.

          "I never said I wasn't a horrible person."--Me, almost daily

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          • #6
            I'd also suggest checking the legality of what they are doing. The problem is, I have no idea who oversees such things when it comes to insurance. With luck, perhaps someone else on here does.

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            • #7
              Tell them what time frame they have to fix it AND notify you of the fix (and refund of the erroneous charges) before you are taking it to your attorney. That usually gets fast action. Of course for this to be effective you do have to follow through if they do not make your deadline.
              GFY

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              • #8
                Quoth MiloMorai View Post
                Tell them what time frame they have to fix it AND notify you of the fix (and refund of the erroneous charges) before you are taking it to your attorney. That usually gets fast action. Of course for this to be effective you do have to follow through if they do not make your deadline.
                There's no need to refund anything because nothing has been charged... yet. The thing that bothers me most is that there are serious problems which require employee intervention and HR refuses to let the communications people communicate about it. It is almost like they want to see how many people can get nailed with the additional charges (they would start 1/1/12).

                I found out today that it is indeed universal across our all of our US-based companies. That means several thousand employees.

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                • #9
                  Talk to a lawyer. They'll have your answers.
                  Customers should always be served . . . to the nearest great white.

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