Our second annual payment was due in September last year & we hit panic stations in late December when we realised we hadn't received the bill. I was freaking out thinking they might've destroyed them or something! I called & apparently they got a new computer system in & some of the bills for storage weren't automatically being generated. I would guess that it might still be the case. Give them a call tomorrow & you'll probably have your bill by the end of the week like we did
Thanks alot, Sarah. You understand exactly how freaked out we are feeling ATM! Hopefully they have a policy where they do not throw embryos out willy-nilly (I am sure they would not be in too much of a hurry to lose the revenue). Will definitely be calling them first thing in the morning.
WTH :-)
Yep I know the feeling exactly & I realised over Christmas & couldn't get through so was panicked for a few days. The receptionist was really apologetic about it too. I imagine if they discarded embryos whenever a bill was late they would face an awful lot of law suits, at least that's what i kept telling myself so as not to panic too much!
Good luck with your phone call & try not to stress too much in the mean time
Ok, so we're not with SIVF, but with QFG, and they have a couple of steps before discarding embryo's because of non payment. We get our storage fee sent every 6 months. If they don't get a payment when they send a bill, they send out another notice after a little while. If that one doesn't get paid, i think they send another one, then if that one isn't paid, they send a letter asking if there are any problems, have you recently changed your address etc... then i think there was another step before they discard. Basically i think it worked out to be somewhere around a year of them chasing you for payment before they started sending letters asking what's going on.
Anyway, my point is, when you call, maybe ask them if there is a procedure in place? How many times will they try to contact you before they would consider discarding your embryo's? Having said that, I still freaked out late last year when they were a few weeks late with sending our storage fee. Aust post was the problem, and the bill arrived a few days later.
Just thought I should write the outcome of my phone call this morning in case any one else has a full scale panic outside of business hours like I did...
Turns out SIVF will send out three invoices, before passing on to a debt collector. As for the embryos, they need BOTH parent's consent before doing anything with them.
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