Blue Shield of CaliforniaReviews of blueshieldca.com

You cannot get a hold of anyone via phone for a long time. When you do, they don't know anything or your call gets cut off, or there is really poor reception but they won't call you back. Their system isn't updated so all the doctors they say are accepting new patients are not. They are missing doctors in their system who are accepting new patients, and even if you give them the NPI number or the Tax ID of the doctor, they can't find them. And then they say stay on the line for a survey and you get cut off as well.

5 is the number of times I had to call in to cancel my health insurance. Why? Its simple, 4 out of 5 times my reason for calling was to cancel, and the reps that were supposed to answer my call instantly hung up on me (gee, I wonder why?!) The 5th time however, I stated an entirely different reason (a positive reason, like "I want to upgrade my health insurance" and wouldnt you know it, someone answered almost instantly. It really should be illegal for healthcare companies to bury their cancellation process through a bunch of unindexed website pages, or require them to call in. The fact that Blueshield follows these shady practices shows their true colors : They want you locked in and happy about paying hand over fist for sub-par insurance services. Blueshield has the audacity to increase my premium by 12% and cut ALL of the decent doctors in my local area out of their network. Their solution? Simple. Nothing. Let the automated system assign me one of the worst rated doctors in the county and let me deal with the consequences. I found this out after a 30 minute drive to the healthcare provider that I've preferred for over 8 years. Over the last 4 years with blueshield, my premium has raised 53%. The level of care and the features of my healthcare plan however, haven't changed at all. What a slap in the face it is to charge your customers MORE money to inconvenience THEM. Every support rep on the other end of the phone is entirely unpleasant to deal with, getting help from one is akin to peeling off your own fingernails. If I could give blueshield a -5 I would. Its sad that these insurance companies are all blood sucking worms that provide such little value that their only ace in the hole is to trap you into their system by making their exit process so unbelievably tedious.

If you are considering switching to Blueshield CA, I suggest you try to look for another. Here is my experience telling you why: 1. They have very bad reputation among the doctors. I am not sure about the reason but I have been rejected by a lot of doctors when I told them I am with Blueshield in the past 10 years. 2. They are not standing on the customer’s side. Once my wife had an emergency visit during Pandemic. The hospital send me a bill of $1400 for just providing me a prescription. My wife didn’t even have a chance to talk to the dictor. The nurse just checked my wife outside of the door for about 5 minutes and gave us a prescription. Then they tried to charge $1400. Blueshield at the beginning didn’t stand on our side and ask us to pay for it. After I argued with them a lot of times they eventually cancel the charge. 3. Their international partner are extremely limited. Once my son had emergency visit in China. The CS was unable to provide a list of the hospital that was covered. I went to one of the largest local hospital and they told me they are qualified with Blueshield. But later on, Blueshield denied the reimbursement and keep saying it is outside of their network. I asked them to provide a list of the hospitals in the network and they didn’t respond. 4 Their last and the most important reason, they play super nasty. When I want to switch my son’s insurance to other carriers, I called them to ask what I need to do. First the CS told me I just need to give them a notice like 2-3 weeks ahead. But later on when I called them back, they refused to cancel for me and asked me to do it together with my son. Even my name is already added to the authorized user list they still want to give you hard time. Later on I called back with my son next to me. For a very simple cancellation, they take like an hour to finish. At the end, they said they also need to transfer me to their payment department to cancel the autopay. I’m not why I need to do that since the CS confirmed the account has been cancelled. But luckily I still finish this step. After a month, I hot a letter from them saying I have a payment due and they cannot process my payment. I called and the CS told me my account was not cancelled due to their policy “I need to report which carrier I transfer to and provide proof. This is to protect the customer’s privacy from scam”. WTH? I told them I have rights not to tell them where I switch to. But they told me in this case they cannot cancel the account for me. What rogues they are! I know that this is just an excuse for them to stop you from leaving them. Even I send them the proof they can still give other excuses. I consulted a friend and decided not to reply on the payment due issue. They will automatically cancelled it if they didn’t receive the payment. I am glad I did the right thing to cancelled the autopay otherwise I need to file a dispute with the credit card company. In my lifetime I seldom see any big companies playing nasty like Blueshield. The other one I had before is Dish network but it is like more than 15 years ago. For this kind of company, we should avoid using them like plague. I hope everyone see my story and save time from not using this company.

I've been on the phone now for 40 minutes trying to find out when Blue Shield will bother getting around to authorizing a medication ordered two months ago. After spending 30 minutes on the phone with the customer service rep, she transferred me to the wrong department. I've now been waiting for 10 minutes for the wrong department to transfer me to the correct department. Color me unimpressed.

Worst customer service ever. Good luck talking to a real human being

Blue shield is impossible for providers offices to work with. They legitimately told me to call the customer only support line about a claim knowing nothing about their own company when i spoke to them. Cheapest and most poorly trained call center i have ever spoken with. They truly don't have the first clue about anything and a half way understanding of their own terribly grating script.

I used an out of network provider for my hearing aids and boy, was this a mistake! Blue Shield only paid one half of my hearing aids and claims a computer program problem caused only one half payment. They would have to manually input the other amount. This has been going on for almost 6 months! Every time I call, same old run around. I am getting very frustrated with their service and wished our organization never switched from United Health!

When I signed up for the plan under my Medicare coverage I was told all my current medications were covered. They were clearly not. The agent had lied. The only communications I received after becoming a member was denial letters. I switched plans 3 months later.