Consumer complaint received 2023-06-29
Product: Debt collection — Medical debt
Issue: Written notification about debt — Didn't receive notice of right to dispute
Company: The CBE Group, Inc. (SC)

My wife and I had a child at XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX in XXXX, SC. Our son was born on XX/XX/XXXX. After being discharged from the hospital, we thought we made good on all our medical bills. Over a year later, on XX/XX/XXXX, we receive a letter in the mail from The CBE Group , Inc., a debt collection agency, telling us that we owe {$3000.00} to them, that was not paid to XXXX hospital. After logging in to our XXXX insurance account, which we are no longer members of, I discovered a bill break down in the amount of {$3000.00}. The bulk of that bill, namely {$2300.00}, was a nursery room charge. My wife and I did not use the nursery room a single time, with bathing and naps all done in our room, and circumcision performed at a later date in an outpatient setting. We were not informed that we would be charged for the nursery room, whether we used it or not. 

I called the billing department at XXXX XXXX XXXX to ask if that part of the bill could be dropped since the nursery was not used, and to ask why we were not given notifications of the owed amount until receiving the letter from collections. I was informed that nothing could be done about the price since it had already gone to collections and was out of their hands. I was also told that notifications of the bill were put onto their XXXX system for us to use, and that alerts were sent out on 4 specific dates : XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX. I asked if proof could be provided to me that the notifications were sent, and was told that no proof could be given. 

After departing from the hospital, my wife and I did not log into our XXXX but one time, but no bill was viewed. After the phone conversation, I logged onto our XXXX. I could not see any obvious alerts as to an owed amount, neither on my wife 's nor my son 's account. I checked our preferences on how we wanted to be notified of bills, and email notification was all that was selected. Neither of us recall ever setting up these preferences, so I'm lead to believe that this was our default setting. I then looked back in our emails to see the alerts that were reportedly sent out on those 4 dates, and I discovered that no such emails were received on any of those days. I called back to the billing department last week on XX/XX/XXXX to ask to speak to a manager so I could plead our case. I was informed that a request would be put in for a manager to reach out to me and, if accepted, I could expect to hear back in 2-3 days. I can only assume at this point that my request was rejected and I will not receive a call from them. Finally, I also called The CBE Group debt collection agency on XX/XX/XXXX in hopes to dispute the claim, but was told that nothing would result from the dispute since it had been over a year since the bill was issued ( XX/XX/XXXX ). 

To summarize, I feel that we should not have been charged nearly {$2400.00} for a service that was never used, especially without notifying us beforehand about it. More importantly, though, I feel that we were not given proper notification of a bill coming due, not by mail, phone call, or email. We only found out from a letter by the collection agency. Moreover, we found out after it was too late to even dispute it with either the hospital or collection agency. And finally, I feel that throughout this entire process, representatives I spoke to at the hospital and the collection agency had no desire to help us find a resolution to our issue other than getting the full amount paid as quickly as possible. Instead of any hint of taking accountability, the representatives blamed other departments or agencies.