at least, not from a customer service representative.

I got a call today from my dentist's office noting that the insurance had rejected my claim for the crown I'm going to need on the tooth that was root-canaled last month. Turns out they rejected it because of "frequency", because I had an onlay on that tooth less than five years ago. They didn't cover that work, but that's apparently beside the point - it's not a question of how often they're willing to pay up, but of how often they're willing to admit work ought to be done. After several rounds of disagreeing with people about that, I finally got a supervisor's supervisor who - I mean, this is making a long afternoon's story extremely short - heard me read a paragraph that said "Limitations of service - Placement or replacement of single crowns, inlays, onlays, single and abutment buildups and post and cores, bridges, full and partial dentures – one within five years of their placement," and said "Wait, yours says 'one'? Mine says 'not within five years of initial placement'." And agreed that the discrepancy was problematic. And is Looking Into It (along with the question of whether "destroyed by root canal" ought to be an exception to "onlay didn't last five years") and will get back to me tomorrow or Monday, and left his full name and direct dial in case that doesn't happen.

Listen: I was polite to everyone, even when I was annoyed at the fact that they had told me the same thing five times instead of acknowledging that they had told me the same thing four times already, I had understood it each of those times, and I wanted to be escalated to someone else please; and I apologized to no fewer than four people for the fact that I was annoyed on their phones when clearly they were just the messengers and not the people actually making the decisions that were making me angry. But I wasn't having any of it! The things they were telling me could not possibly be true, and if they were true, they couldn't possibly be right. All over again I am thankful for being in a position where I can stick with it until I get something that might someday grow up into an answer I will find at least reasonable, and hopefully actually acceptable.

So the moral of the story is this: (Of Course We Must All Always Do So Socially; But From A Customer Service Representative,) Never Take No For An Answer.