I sent the following email today to HR: I wanted to bring a matter to your attention that I believe highlights a conduct that is not consistent with Walmart’s values. I received a letter notification from a company called Consova asking for information regarding my dependents. They claim they sent the first letter in April. It might be so. Their letter (subsequent ones) does not bear the Walmart logo and as I had no prior business relationship with them it could have been easily mistaken for a spam mailing and discarded with cable and car insurance solicitations. In May, when I received their second notice, I called Consova and confirmed that they are legitimate and indeed they are asking me, on behalf of Walmart, to prove that my wife is my wife and my children are my children. Otherwise, they threaten to remove them from the insurance coverage. First question: I wonder why there was no notification from my employer, Walmart, regarding this requirement? Best would have been by email. There were recent emails from ‘scoop’ regarding LGBTQ health benefits and analog insulin etc., but this could not make the news? Note, that my second daughter was born this February, and I was on LOA for several weeks since then. You can imagine that I have other things on my mind than to deal with pointless information requests. The state of California does not issue birth certificates automatically and Consova does not accept the hospital issued birth certificate, which lists the parents name and place and date of birth. So Consova asked me to acquire the state issued birth certificate or lose the coverage for our newborn. Normally, one can get the birth certificate on a walk in basis, the same day. However, due to Covid the office of Vital Records in San Francisco was closed. They only reopened a couple weeks ago in June. Until that time the process to get the certificate required us to mail in a notarized request form. Processing time was estimated at 4 weeks. I emphasize again that I was on LOA and did not look forward to pointless visits to the notary and post office. With the reopening finally happening in San Francisco, the office opened and I could make the trip to SF yesterday to get the birth certificate. So hopefully this will be sorted out. However, this whole experience left quite a bad taste regarding my employer. I do not feel I was treated with respect. Walmart treated me as a criminal, it was passive-aggressive how they used a third party service to make this as faceless as possible. I am also quite convinced this whole verification is just a waste of resources. Those who want to fraudulently claim someone as a dependent will fake the documents needed. This verification effort will not stop them any more than simply asking them to confirm their dependent with a threat of dismissal if they lie about it. I would appreciate if you could escalate my concerns. I specifically would like the following question answered: Why was I not notified by Walmart directly regarding this matter?
I don’t work for Walmart, but i have chosen benefits for 2 companies and when you choose your benefits it says you’ll have to verify your dependents. Idk how much detail it goes into there but they do mention it. If not then people could put any random person on their insurance.
I worked for them for years. There was no problem until this April. They did not do this during the enrollment period.
Also I was on leave of absence "bonding with a newborn" which is administered also by an external company called Sedgwick. They had no problem accepting my word and the hospital records. So how does it make sense to process my leave request and then question that the child is mine....