Some horror stories shared online about mismanagement at a company can make you wonder why such careless workers were hired in the first place. Unfortunately for one Oregon employee, they didn’t know their organization’s accounting department was poorly run until some serious drama hit the fan. While the department was under investigation, it was revealed that this employee had been paying for life insurance and AD&D premiums for the past few years without ever actually being enrolled by the company.
Fortunately for the company, the worker doesn’t believe this massive oversight was in bad faith. According to their post on r/legaladvice, this mistake wasn’t noticed until this year, “in part due to legitimate turmoil in our accounting department (this is not just HR covering his [expletive]),” referring to the HR representative who informed them about the news. “Thankfully, I have not sustained any serious injuries or died these past few years so the issue was not discovered sooner,” they sighed in relief. Still, the company would have to greatly compensate for all the deductions it has been more or less ‘unknowingly’ stealing from this worker.
To resolve this major error, the Oregon business vowed to write a check for the premiums the worker paid until now, as well as to stop withdrawing the payments from their wages. After all that, HR promised to re-enroll the employee properly once they get their new health form approved. While it’s good that the organization fessed up and offered to make things right, the worker believes it’s still incredibly shady that this oversight wasn’t noticed for 3 years. That said, they believe that there must be some sort of legal repercussions for this.
“While what HR is doing is the technically right course of action,” one commenter notes, “it’s going to cause a significant headache for you if something happens in the next two years.” The reason is that the form signed initially would be beyond the two-year period, so there would be an issue dealing with the insurance company’s “poor customer service” again. “Accidents happen, and it would be awful if you passed and your family had to deal with a mess,” they conclude.
“I think something fishy is going on,” adds another. Initially, no health form was provided for the employee when they first thought the company was signing them up for life insurance. But now, suddenly, a health evaluation form is required? Rather suspicious, but whatever the case, this Oregon company will have to work hard to earn back its trust after pulling such a careless stunt, especially one involving someone’s life insurance.
