Sunday, April 13, 2014

This Day In Snookland...Of Lemonade Stands And Insurance Corporations.

AllYourMisManagements'R
UsVille


The disaster that is the five year-long ICBC billing SNAFU....

Bob Mackin follows up on the story first reported by The Province's David Carrigg yesterday:

....David Carrigg in The Province revealed on April 12 how ICBC will repay $39 million to customers it overcharged after a vehicle identification system glitch. Transportation Minister Todd Stone told Carrigg that the Crown corporation also undercharged $71 million, but won’t be recouping.

I have exclusive, new information below about this Autoplan botch-up of epic proportions that has been festering for more than half a decade.

A source told me that ICBC has been working for several months on the top-secret ”PINS” — Project INSurance — to right the wrong. The Insurance Pricing (Actuarial) and Predictive Analytics departments are involved in the project, which was triggered by a Freedom of Information request.

ICBC wanted to keep the SNAFU secret until summertime: letters to customers were supposed to go out in July. In the meantime, ICBC has been gearing up to upgrade servers and systems so that ICBC.com could handle a major onslaught of web traffic. Without a major capacity boost, crashes would have been inevitable. As it is, the news of the multimillion-dollar mistake will probably tax the system much sooner...



Go read Mr. Mackin's entire piece. It's good, it's thorough, and it is both whistleblower- and FOI-assisted.

Take that Mr. Coleman.


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Bottom line....

Tens of millions lost to the public purse.

Again.

Meanwhile, the VSB is getting ready to cut the heart out of everything for want of something on the order of $12 million.

And the Premier's response?

Well, pretty much what you would expect from a person in power who will pretty much say anything.

(more on that tomorrow).

And here you thought the Golden Era was over.....




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Can somebody remind me again who started ICBC?....And who got the boot heel of big multinational insurers off  of our necks?....And made us money too?....Was it the ol' Socreds?... or the Campbellarians?...or the Snooklandians?...or their Cronies....I think not....(all of which, of course, like the ALR, is why it must be destroyed).


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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since Todd Stone was aware of this some time ago, I'm sure its meant put him in a positive light after the furor over the BC Ferry fare increases.

And of course if we only had private insurers, you would never be aware of any overcharging. Is this another BC Liberal strategy to privatize ICBC?

Anonymous said...

When I first heard about this....... I was angry..... very angry. Let me repeat that..... I knew about this some time ago... but held it from the public until we could come up with a plan to blame someone else... but we got caught with our pants down again.. so my multi-million dollar PR staff suggested I come out with the classic political BS.... to make it look like we just found out & we are angry.... very angry.
WOW..... I'm sounding more like Todd Stone every day.

Guy in Victoria

North Van's Grumps said...

Hmmmm, Mike de Jong's Balanced Budget? ... ICBC contribution to Mike de Jong's balancing act? Will ICBC clawing back enough funds to cover the REPAYMENTs and if so, will the Razor Thin Balanced Budget be royally SCREWED?


Anonymous said...

SH:

RossK:

"Can somebody remind me again who started ICBC?....And who got the boot heel of big multinational insurers off of our necks?....And made us money too? ....Was it the ol' Socreds?... or the Campbellarians?...or the Snooklandians?...or their Cronies....I think not....(all of which, of course, like the ALR, is why it must be destroyed)."

The emboldened conspirators, are no longer content with merely spitting on the many-faceted legacy born of the Golden Age of Davey; if it isn't fast, and if it isn't a ferry or a back-dated note, it fails to serve the purposes of the Black-Hearted Fifth Columnists.

Davey and the Doctor, Dr. Ransford that is, were the Fathers of the modern BC Ambulance Service. The vision of Davey and the Doc, was to have consistent pre-hospital care across the Province. Now we can't have that can we? --- And don't worry folks we don't.... Ask the people in the North, or ask any paramedic stalled at a hospital emergency ward because beds... well you know...

A freshly- stealthy seed-change within the BC Ambulance of plural dating fame, think brother-husbands (or google super siren), is apparently not for the eyes of the uninitiated. BCAS's two new Mistresses of Mayhem are born of the bureaucracy, not anything as messy as emergency care. The irony is, that the seeds of BCAS's destruction as a service of professional emergency responders were unwittingly provided nourishment by a one-trick BCAS lifer turned golden boy- diva, recently cut loose, to perhaps, inculcate his "special" leadership mythology at his 5 minute alma mater.

A further irony in all this, is that The Overlord, who chose the new mistresses, has been conveniently reinstalled, and is seemingly unscathed by his promoting and propping of the boy-diva and his simpering surviving cronies.

JR said...

This has been going on for far longer than the last 5 years. I bought a new car in 1989 and had it insured by ICBC. In 1999 when I was renewing it at my local insurance broker she asked a simple question about the vehicle configuration. When I told her I did not have the deluxe model she said I had been paying too much for 10 years. ICBC response was to basically pound sand as I should have known better. We HAVE to use ICBC so we need to TRUST their representatives. They have let us all down. I do not promote a private insurance model just get ICBC back to what it was originally envisioned as. A low cost insurance that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. In the last 20 years things have gotton away from that original mandate.

RossK said...

Fair enough JR--

Thanks.

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