I hate it when I’m almost too mad to write clearly.

Basically, as far as I am concerned, Standard Insurance has stolen more than $6300 from me and refuses to give it back or give me appropriate customer service.

In late October, I initiated a rollover from my 401k at Fidelity, the provider of 401ks at my last job. Fidelity issued a check to me (their policy; they won’t directly mail a check to another provider) and I forwarded it on to Standard.

A couple of weeks later I noticed it still hadn’t posted to my account.

I called Standard and they gave me some vague blow-off about it not being received, no record of it, all while sounding annoyed at me. After this conversation, I presumed I’d screwed up the paperwork somehow and the check had been lost.

Standard advised me to wait a while and see if it surfaced.

As of last week, it still hadn’t posted and I hadn’t heard anything. I called back. They gave me the same runaround, but this time suggested I contact Fidelity and get a check re-issued, as it had been lost.

I called Fidelity (who has great customer service, so far, by the way), who said they’d love to re-issue a check, but they couldn’t, as the check they wrote in October had been cashed November 6th.

I called Standard back (this was last Thursday or so) and presented them with this information. At this point I got a little less nice. My not-niceness was very much ignored as the gentleman rushed to get me off the phone. The insinuation was still that somehow I’d done something wrong. No apologies. No explanations. Just a “we marked this as urgent” (with no sense of urgency) and “someone will call you back on Monday or Tuesday.”

It’s Wednesday. I can’t say I’m surprised no one called me yet, but I called them again this a.m. No further information (urgent my ass) and the same lackluster phone experience with the guy not particularly helpful or nice. Could I talk to the department researching this? No, apparently, he claimed they’re in the “back office” and can’t talk to people. Finally I demanded his supervisor, and ended up at voice mail. I wonder if this person will return my call.

For now, I’m sitting back, trying not to be too angry, waiting for a copy of Fidelity’s check to arrive in the mail (see–Fidelity even suggested this themselves…there is such thing as proactive customer service) and wondering if I should call a lawyer.

Thoughts?