Would you pay a therapist's bill issued for the first time 11 months after services?

[Anonymous]

We no longer work with this group. They, therapists and admin staff, were very disorganized in general and the therapy turned out not to be helpful. They never billed us for the last month of services that we were there. Almost a year later a bill shows up. Should they be penalized for their disorganization? I'm inclined not to pay it.

[Anonymous]

yes, you should pay it.

[Anonymous]

Did you get the services?

Yes?

Then you owe the bill.

[Anonymous]

If this is the way we judged the validity of a bill, then hospitals and labs would NEVER get paid!

[Anonymous]

Yes, pay it. Duh.

[Anonymous]

I agree. You need to pay it.

[Anonymous]

Yep, I'd pay. We have a very disorganized interventionist who we paid weekly, but she forgot to deposit the checks for a year. She sent me back all the checks she didn't deposit and we wrote her new ones. Annoying yes, but she gave us a service and in return we paid.

[Anonymous]

Of course you have to pay it.

[Anonymous]

My wife sees a lot of doctors. We frequently get bills 9+ months after service. Why? In the past, we had my wife double covered by insurance, both under her own and under mine. So the doctor's office would file with her insurance, get back what that insurance would pay, have to recalculate the remaining balance and then send it to the second insurance. When it finally came back from that one, they would evaluate if there were any overage fees that they would waive and would finally issue us a statement to be paid. And if other of the insurance companies rejected the insurance, they would have to review the reason for rejection and if it wasn't for a valid reason, they would file an appeal for us to try to make sure that we paid as little as possible.

I, for one, appreciated how much the doctors offices tried to save us money by pushing through the bureaucratic red tape associated with medical insurance. I get annoyed if they send us a bill quickly and there's a question about if the insurance deducted the correct amount and the office didn't bother to see if anything could be done, but just forwarded us a bill for several hundred dollars when it should be much less.

I would definitely pay. If you don't pay, they will probably send it to a collection agency and you credit will correctly be dinged.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it's the right thing to do. Just because they are disorganized does not excuse you from paying for services rendered.

[Anonymous]

OP here. For the posters who brought up insurance you are right--some of those bills can take a long time to arrive. In this case, however, there was no insurance, just a huge amount of laziness. And FWIW, the bill is not insubstatial--an entire month's worth of services. For the other months that we were with the firm we had to be persistent to get bills. Now they send it out of the clear blue sky? It's incredibly aggravating.

[Anonymous]

If you used the services, then of course you should pay it. How it it even in question?
If you don't pay, they could sue you, ruin your credit, and you would lose.

[Anonymous]

I would pay if I received the service but honestly I would probably not be very prompt about it.

[Anonymous]

You received a service and you need to pay for it. Won't they turn it over to a collections agency if you don't pay?

[Anonymous]

I don't see how you can even consider not paying.