Empower Benefit Accounts

For those who have had a condition requiring multiple doctor, office visits, radiology, and other procedures,, in almost every instance when paying for those cost with the Empower Debit Card, you find out soon that there is this major disconnect between the app and reality. For example, when you use the card to pay your co-pay at a doctors office, almost always power ask for further documentation. The doctors office won’t provide that kind of detail that Empower requires, so you end up waiting for the EOB and submit that. What this creates is a significant challenge to keep track of what expenses have been paid for with the debit card, and those that have been paid with the debit card, but for which additional documentation is required. So you wait until the end of the month or two months and look at your EOB‘s, and then you have to try and figure out which ones were paid for with the debit card with no further documentation required, and those that were paid to the provider, but for which an EOB is now required. It’s hard to put in the words, the challenges, but for us, the end result is ditch the Empower Debit Card, and go back to the old way of collecting your EOB’s, and submitting all of those to Empower for reimbursement.

I really wanted to like this app but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve spent nearly an hour trying to check all the boxes to set up direct deposit for reimbursements to myself. Entered account info in 3 places, found the tiny toggle switch buried, still the app says I need to have a direct deposit account set up. Customer service doesn’t have the knowledge and instead of transferring me to someone who does, puts me hold while he researches. :(