Jay Lagare

Jeanne, Michelle, and I went to Power Plant for some family bonding. Michelle and Jeanne only had brunch so out first stop was snacks. Michelle and Jeanne headed over to McDonald’s for twister fries and drinks. I went to Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and munchkins to go before joining them. After snacks, we went window shopping: Power Mac Center for me, Zara for Michelle, and Toys ‘R’ Us for Jeanne.

After window shopping, we bought groceries. We got Jeanne a car cart and she was happy for a while until she spotted some toddlers pushing mini-carts. Needless to say, she wanted one. Kids! I looked for one but it seemed every one was taken. So I just promised her to get a mini-cart the next time we do our groceries there. She wasn’t unhappy with it and got a bit unruly. But with Michelle helping, we managed to get most of what we needed and soon headed over for checkout. It was packed but I was luckily able to get to a counter pretty fast.

After groceries, we had dinner at Kaya. We got the usual: Korean beef rib stew (the one from Kimchi is still better) for me, sizzling garlic shrimps (FTW!) for Michelle, and deep fried battered shrimps for Jeanne. After dinner and on the way to the parking, we stopped to get some cherries (blaming Beth and Banjo for the craving). Unfortunately, we had to rush going home because of the groceries so we weren’t able to eat them for dessert. No matter, they’re good any which meal you eat them.

I figured I’d ask the credit card company to help Sun Life resolve my double billing. I called them up and explained the situation. They took down the details and asked me to download and submit a dispute form which is in PDF format. It can be snail mailed, faxed, or emailed. I don’t have stamps nor a fax, so I chose email.

Once I got the form, I used Mac OS X’s built-in Preview application to fill it up. But what about my signature? Well, Preview had it covered, too. It has a handy feature to use the iSight camera to capture a written signature and insert it into the form.

With the form completed, I emailed it and right away I got a confirmation email. Now that’s a stark difference from my experience with Sun Life. Here’s hoping together they can resolve the issue faster.

My insurance premium was due and, for the first time, I decided to try paying via the Sun Life’s SunLink Online. On my first attempt, there was an error after submitting the payment. I waited a bit for a confirmation email. Since there’s none, I tried again and this time it was successful and I got a confirmation email.

A few days later, I got my credit card billing and it showed two billings from Sun Life. So apparently, my first attempt had registered with the payment system but hadn’t registered with Sun Life. Poor transaction programming to say the least.

I quickly got in touch with Sun Life. They just as quickly told me, it’s my credit card company’s fault for billing twice. I explained why I think it’s their payment system’s problem. They got back to me saying that, according to their records, they have received only one payment. I had to send over the credit card billing before they finally said they’ll send it over for reconciliation with accounting. Which probably means I’ll have to wait some more.

I don’t know why Sun Life is making it difficult. With Amazon, I usually just send a complaint and they would agree to investigate it right away, i.e. they will talk to their e-commerce people, their payment, provider, even my credit card company. With Sun Life, I had to take extra effort to convince them to take responsibility.

UPDATE 8/3: Sun Life informed me that the double billing has been reversed. Yay!