Randy Hall, Mr. Nice Guy Medicare Advisor

Medicare Insurance for Middle and West Tennessee

Meet Mr. Randy W. Hall , Your Trusted Medicare Advisor in Franklin, Tennessee

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Are you in search of a reliable Medicare advisor in Tennessee, specifically in Franklin? Well, you have reached the right place. I am Randy W. Hall, and I’m proud to be your independent Medicare agent in Franklin, Tennessee. Some folks around here affectionately refer to me as “Mr. Nice Guy Medicare Advisor.”

With thirteen years of experience in the field, I am passionate about helping you navigate the world of Medicare plans, making the process as smooth as possible, and providing you with personalized solutions that cater to your unique healthcare needs.

Why Choose an Independent Medicare Agent in Franklin, TN?

Here are some compelling reasons:

Unbiased Advice

I have no affiliations with any particular insurance company. This independence allows me to provide you with advice that is completely impartial and unbiased. I’ll explore a wide array of Medicare plans and help you select the one that best suits your individual needs.

Personalized Service

I believe in the power of personalization. I take the time to understand you, your unique health needs, your budget, and your preferences. Armed with this information, I can tailor my recommendations to ensure you get the right coverage that’s perfectly suited to you.

Comprehensive Knowledge

I represent the majority of the Medicare plans available, including Medicare Supplement and Medicare Advantage plans. My in-depth knowledge enables me to explain the nuances of these plans, making it easier for you to make informed decisions.

Ongoing Support

My commitment doesn’t end with your plan selection. I’m here to support you throughout the year, ensuring your chosen plan continues to meet your needs, even as your circumstances change.

Local Expertise

As a proud resident of Franklin, TN, I have a deep understanding of the special healthcare needs and preferences of our local community. I can help you find Medicare plans that are widely accepted by healthcare providers in our area.

Access to Top Insurance Carriers

Working with me gives you access to a wide array of insurance carriers. This ensures you have a variety of plans to choose from, all tailored to meet your specific needs.

Peace of Mind

I’m here to provide peace of mind. You can relax knowing that you have a dedicated professional to guide you through the Medicare maze, answer your questions, and assist with claims or coverage changes.

The End Note

If you’re looking for a knowledgeable, experienced, and trustworthy independent Medicare agent in Franklin, TN, I’m here to assist. With personalized service, extensive Medicare plan options, and a deep understanding of the local healthcare landscape, I’m dedicated to ensuring you make informed decisions and secure the right Medicare coverage for your needs. Call me today to learn more and embark on your Medicare journey with confidence.

What We Actually Do for Our Clients

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I’ve been an independent Medicare insurance broker since 2010 and have been lucky enough to have a nice book-of-business of folks I’ve helped. Some of my clients do go all the way back to when I was a rookie agent and finding my way!

One of the reasons why, according to them, is I remind them several times annually who I am and if they need my help with anything related to their Medicare plan, I’m responsive and helpful. Unfortunately, in my industry, there’s a lot of turnover (91% or more of agents specializing in Medicare don’t make it past their first 18 months in business before quitting). Not only that, those who sign up under someone may never, or rarely, hear back from the person once they enrolled them in their plan.

Early on I realized that it was far easier to keep a client than to go get new ones. So, I decided, especially for my Medicare Advantage clients, to give them a call every October to check in on them and see how their particular plan was working for them. Furthermore, if they wanted to do a complimentary Medicare review, I’d rather be the one doing it than someone else. Besides, one of the benefits of being a broker is I can offer multiple options in terms of plans and companies.
Since these Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans change their formularies and co-pays annually, as an independent agent, I knew that what was good when I enrolled someone, was subject to change. And if someone’s going to change, they could still keep me as an agent.

I also mail my clients a letter every September to remind them I’ll be reaching out to them. In addition we also mention they’re about to be hit with tons of telemarketing calls, have their mailboxes filled with confusing information and non-stop TV & radio ads that beckon you to call them. We caution them not to do that as they’ll likely be calling overseas and speaking to people who don’t know their local market and won’t give advice tailored to their needs.

But the most important thing I do for my clients is to actually help them if they ever run into an issue with their plan, or don’t know where to start to take advantage of a benefit, amongst other things. I pride myself on the personal touch and my clients will tell you I go above and beyond to help them. I have many 5-star reviews on Google business so you don’t have to take my word for it 😊
See for yourself at: https://g.page/MrNiceGuyMedicare

If you’re ready to take the next step forward to make an appointment you can call me 615-578-5174 or come see me at one of my YMCA locations from October 1st-December 7th from 8 a.m. through noon here:
https://i2meeting.as.me.RANDYHALL

If you want to see a Nice Guy to help with your Medicare review I’m available at the YMCA

Why is Medicare so confusing? What the heck is Joe Namath talking about?

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Now, more than ever, I’m getting those turning 65 calling me or meeting with me and they say something to the effect: ‘I get all this stuff in the mail, why is it all so confusing?’. My personal belief is the party who sent the mailing intends to confuse you and get you to call them in an attempt to get you in their sales funnel when you call to get clarification.

Prior to working in insurance I worked for an advertising company called J. Walter Thompson out of Detroit, MI (my hometown). One of the things I learned working there was an ad was effective if it created curiosity. Which is where Joe Namath comes in. His ads for the ‘Medicare Helpline’ create curiosity, especially for the Senior-age demographic, who were impressionable kids when he was a superstar for the New York Jets winning Super Bowl 3, and want to give the venerable Broadway Joe the benefit-of-the-doubt.

The ad is generic (by design) as he lists a host of benefits that may or may not even be available in your particular part of the country. The entire goal of the commercial is to use your curiosity about the benefits he’s talking about and your trust of his persona to call the number on the screen.

Which, believe me, folks nationwide have done in droves. Once you make that call you get a licensed insurance agent in a cube farm somewhere who will try every trick in the book to get you to switch your insurance to a plan to one they sell, whether it’s in your best interest or not. The truth is that the Medicare “Helpline” is designed to help the agent you wind up speaking with on the phone, not the customer necessarily. Their entire endgame is to get a commission out of you and anything that results after that is of little concern to them.

Odds are that agent knows nothing about your local market and is not even in the state you live in. When it comes to Medicare Advantage plans in particular, knowing the local market can be the difference in knowing which company or circumstances will best benefit the client. Once an agent on the Medicare Helpline has you as a client, if you have follow-up questions or issues, you will be lucky to ever hear or get ahold of from them ever again, Especially if there’s a service issue on the plan they put you on.

You’d be better served calling 615-578-5174 if you live in TN than the # above 😉

At least with a local agent, such as myself, we know our local market well and if you need our help, we are available and easy to get ahold of. If you were to survey my clients they’d tell you I follow up with them annually to bring them up-to-date on changes to their plan and am responsive if they ever need my help.

And to bring it back to the original point, it’s my personal mission to answer your Medicare questions in a way that’s easy for you to understand. One of my strengths is breaking down details in an easy-to-understand way that’s straightforward for you, the client.

I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t ask me what it’s like to be an NFL Quarterback, so why would you ask a former NFL QB, no offense Broadway Joe, about Medicare? If you thought about it, you wouldn’t. And whatever you do, don’t trust Henry Winkler (aka The Fonz) about those reverse mortgages :).

-Randy W. Hall is Mr. Nice Guy Medicare Advisor and you can call him to ask Medicare-related questions in Tennessee at 615-578-5174. No pressure ever guaranteed!

The Tale of 2 Companies: Customer Service vs. Customer (Dis)Service

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Bad omen?

Aaron Rodgers has better taste in companies to pitch

Recently I had a brutal customer service experience. My family was travelling to our annual vacation spot in The Gulf of Mexico to Florida. Anyhow, heading south from Franklin, Tennessee we had just gotten past Atlanta and wanted to let our kids get a chance to run around after being in the minivan for hours. Headed down the surface road just off Hwy. 75, we were T-boned by a young guy in his 20’s who somehow didn’t see our van. This caused extensive damage to the passenger side front door and some mild damage to the sliding door.

Miraculously the 2 doors were able to open and close and function. Also, grace to God, no one was hurt. We were able to head all the way to Florida and back for the vacation and take the car in to be repaired upon returning to Franklin, TN. Admittedly it could’ve been way worse. As a client of mine once said “You were about as lucky as you were unlucky”.

Since it was the other driver’s fault 100%, his insurance company was on-the-hook for everything. He had State Farm, which has been great to work with. That, to me, is how customer service should be. They let us pick the place to take our minivan out of ten different shops near us. They also replaced all 3 kids car seats and reimbursed us rapidly. They also let us rent a replacement vehicle, at their cost, from the company that inspired this article. I won’t say the company’s name but it starts with ‘H’, ends in ‘Z’ and OJ Simpson used to shill for them.

Calling the main office to set up the rental went swimmingly and was easy. They said they’d even come and pick me up if I told them what time I was dropping off my car, which is where the adventure starts. Still unsure what day the autobody place would take our van, I informed them I’d let them know when they let me know. They said to call the local pickup location directly to set that up and it would make things go smoother and they gave me the number. This call took place on a Wednesday.

Friday, two days later, I was told to bring my van into the autobody place the upcoming Tuesday at 9:30 am or later. My next call was to the local pickup location and the phone rang-and-rang. It must’ve rung about 10 times. Finally, an automated message says they’re unable to answer the phone and call later. Unbelievably I can’t even leave a message for a callback! Me, being persistent, call back two more times and the same crap happens. Being Mr. Nice Guy, I decide, hey, it’s Friday they must be busy and will try again in a few hours. A few hours later the same, maddening cycle repeats itself. Short of driving there (they’re located on a busy road on a notoriously jammed up all the time), I have no way to reach them directly it would seem.

I had an appointment with a client, so I resolved to call tomorrow.  I try again Saturday morning and afternoon and it’s the same BS. At this point I’m just annoyed and call the main number where I at least got a human and was able to reserve the car. They say they can do it but it’s better to get the actual location to ensure they get my pickup on their end. I tell them my experience and they say they’ll try and call too. They put me on hold to try and call them themselves, to no avail. It’s the same insanity when they try.

At this point they input my desire to get picked up Tuesday morning from their end and say I should try and touch base with the local pickup location just to be sure. I tell them it’s not my fault I can’t touch base and to have a manager try and get these nimrods to answer their phone. The representative says she will and I leave it at that for the day, other than trying to call my local pickup location 2 more times and getting nowhere.

Monday comes and I have way too much going on to stop by personally (which in hindsight I wish I’d done). I do attempt to call several more times and something different does happen finally. Instead of it going to their off-putting message, it forwards me to the main corporate office! I confirm that I’m supposed to be picked up the next day at the autobody shop at 9:30 a.m. and it’s indeed in the reservation. So that gives me optimism (because I want to be that way) that I’m set.

The next morning comes and I get to the autobody place about 9:00 a.m. and just for sport, at this point I call the local pickup location. Again, it immediately forwards to the corporate office and talk to an agent there after being on hold for 15 minutes who tells me it’s showing in their reservation that I’m to be picked up at 9:30 and to be patient until then. I tell them I was just trying to talk to the local pickup office and it forwarded to them when I called.

Having planned on reading a book, I proceed to do that while I wait. 9:30 comes-and-goes. 9:45, same, no sign of a pickup. 10, nothing. 10:30 I start calling again as the guys at the autobody shop start asking me if my ride’s coming. It forwards again to the corporate office and after being on hold for 20 minutes I share that no one has come to get me and when I try and call their freaking number it sends me to them. I fancy myself a patient and caring person, but by this time I’m just done.

The rep proceeds to tell me that since this reservation is being paid for by an insurance company, not me, there’s a different department I’m supposed to be dealing with. This is news to me! They then transfer me and the lady listens to my, by now, elaborate story. She’s very disturbed by my tale of woe and tells me she’ll call me back and try to get a manager to get ahold of someone at the local pickup location to come and get me.

At this point it’s almost lunchtime and since there’s one of those fancy gas stations with real food next door I decide to try and at least get some food, as not only is it hot (it’s August in the South), I’m starting to get hangry (hungry-and-angry for the uninformed). While in the store I get some lunch and a drink and have the brainstorm to send a text to the number I’ve been calling and see if that prompts them to answer the phone. So, I shot off the following text: Will you answer your phone please (prayer hands emoji)?

SOS!

After sending it, I give it a minute and call. A man’s voice answers. I’m almost too stunned to talk. It’s hard to believe that actually worked! I stammer out that I have a reservation and was supposed to be picked up at 9:30 (nearly 2 hours ago) and had no luck getting ahold of him. He weakly says it’s been very busy and at this point I don’t want him to hang up, I just need someone to come and get me from the autobody store. He says that he knows where that is and will have the driver come straight away. Hallelujah! I’m not going to have to call Uber after all and storm in there in a very ‘Un-Nice Guy’ way!

The driver shows up about 20 minutes later and is about as nice a guy as you’d hope for. He’s a senior working this job for some extra money and something to do with his days named Roger. Quickly it’s apparent Roger isn’t in charge of answering the phones over there. He’s a solution in a sea of problems. On our ride to get my rental we talk and I give him a Cliff’s Notes version of the blow-by-blow you may have just read through. He naturally feels sorry for me and is apologetic. I strive to be fair-minded and not be upset at the people who are doing their job well so I just tell him that he’s great and they need more like him. The weirdest, most maddening thing, of the whole ordeal was there was no way for me to leave a message for a callback.

He tells me that he’s not allowed to answer the phone but he hears it ringing all the time when they’re busy and it drives him crazy. We talk and I share what I do and give him my card (because you never know) and tell him how glad I am that he at least was a pleasant part of this entire experience.

The point of telling you all that, I suppose, is so it’s apparent how many times I tried to meet this company half-way. Breaking it down, the corporate office and driver and original reservation-taking team were actually good. But, as the saying goes, you can only be as strong as your weakest link. It wasn’t until my text inexplicably got the local pickup location to answer their phone that I was able to get the problem solved. It’s bananas that there wasn’t a reasonable workaround for one bottleneck (the local pickup location). On the other hand, you had the tremendous experience we enjoyed with State Farm, which was first class all the way. It was 2 completely different ways to handle folks like me and my family, with problems.

What this entire experience did was allow me to reflect on my own standards of service. I’ve been at this for going on eleven years and have to help people with issues when they arise with various insurance companies. Every company out there has issues, believe it or not. I’m like the triage for such problems and why having an agent is helpful (or ought to be). There are things I’ve learned in my experience that my clients wouldn’t have a chance to know. I can save them untold amounts of frustration and wasted time by being their advocate and knowing where to go to fix things. And if I don’t know, I find out. That’s what the commission I earn is for.

Even though I have many clients, every individual one is important. The key to the many is the one. What that means to me is I treat everyone with care and will go to the mat with a company if need be to help any one of them. If I had the opposite attitude, that ‘what difference does one dissatisfied customer make?’ I see in so many companies, it would make me a thief in a sense. The money I get from the companies in commissions to help them would be more-or-less stolen. Furthermore, I take pride in calling my clients back within 24 hours or less, and solving problems or giving them good advice. I’m a huge believer in ‘The Golden Rule’ too.

“I called Randy when he was on vacation and he helped me figure out why my doctor charged my co-pay wrong” – Kathy Haney in Fairview, TN

Okay, okay you caught me bragging on myself a little bit. But that’s what a good agent is supposed to do. I strive to serve everybody like I helped Kathy Haney. Kinda like State Farm was when dealing with them.

Conversely, if the car rental place would’ve just answered my call once when I was trying to arrange a pickup this entire article wouldn’t exist. I’ve realized in 11 years that doing things as they come up, quickly and with a ‘nice’ attitude that even when things go wrong (face it no one’s perfect) the problems are generally way easier to deal with. By being like an ostrich and sticking your head in the sand and hoping it works itself out, you only invite reasonable people to act unreasonably when things go awry. Now, if we could only get government agencies like Medicare itself to read this…😊

What I Learned During the Quarantine of 2020

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It’s been way too long since I’ve been able to write an article for the website. I wish I could tell you it was simply me being lazy and Netflix-and-chilling. It’s been a time for learning lessons here at the Hall household during Quarantine of 2020. In actuality, I’ve been tied up helping my wife adjust to working-from-home while we have all three of our young children, ages 7, 4 and 18 months, be home due to school being cancelled and daycare being for essential workers until just this week. Now that the 2 young ones are in daycare for several days-a-week I’m able to provide this article, so lucky you 😉.

Now, I’m not complaining or venting, in fact the point of this is to do the opposite. It has made me realize how lucky I am that due to being a Medicare broker that my family is afforded the luxury of me being able to be there for them in a daily capacity. For so many worldwide, the strain of having to work-from-home while home-schooling, babysitting and non-stop being around your family is a recipe for disaster and poor mental health. It’s clear to me that quarantining is not healthy for the vast majority of us.

Because I can serve my clients by phone and we didn’t have this happen during my busy season, (October 1st through December 7th) I’ve been able to enroll and do my job remotely when time calls for it. My wife, who has a more demanding job than me, and I have been able to coordinate and cooperate to make sure we can keep those plates spinning 😊. All 5 of us here have been able to social distance responsibly and not put ourselves, or the people we interact with, in harms way. All of us are totally healthy, most thankfully.

The biggest thing I’ve learned during this Quarantine of 2020 has been to be grateful. Grateful for our circumstances being about as good as one could expect in a time of crisis. Grateful our marriage has been a true partnership and has not only survived through this, but actually deepened. Grateful for our kids and having a special opportunity to see them grow and be around them much more at such a critical, impressionable age. Is it neat, clean and easy? Absolutely not, but it’s been awesome to witness them and take in the small, daily interactions that help bond a family, both individually with each one and collectively as a small gang. Another cool off-shoot of this was our extended family started to do a Zoom call every week so we could all check-in on each other, since we couldn’t be together in the same rooms.

It also has taught me not to take my current clients for granted. Without them using me as an agent we could’ve been financially strapped and stressed while we waited for the okay to come out the last three months. Because of them and how this business works (residuals as opposed to getting a paycheck), we were minimally affected. Also, due to referrals and word-of-mouth of my clients I’ve been able to sign up and help by phone and over Zoom just about the same amount of folks I typically help during a non-enrollment period. Without my clients telling their friends and family about The Nice Guy it’s unlikely that would’ve been the case.

This has made for some non-stop days and nights, mainly due to the 18-month old needing constant supervision, but things have been happy and healthy for the most part. This has also helped give me the gift of acceptance. The Stoics always spoke of only investing yourself emotionally into things you had control over and this situation has really helped illustrate that point to me. Would I have chosen to be stuck at home 24/7 with my family for months? Would I have lit the economy on fire and left millions of Americans wondering about where their next meal is coming from? Or if someone coughs or sneezes wondering if it’s going to kill someone down-the-line? A most resounding ‘no’. Still, nobody ran it by me or any of us. We had to subvert ourselves to the circumstances for the greater good whether we were ready or not.

So given this setup, I chose, personally, to embrace it for what it was and got quite a bit out-of-it. Writing this may be a bit premature given we may not be out-of-the-woods yet, but if we have to do this whole mess again, I’ll make the same decision. To accept and embrace the things I can control and change (mostly my outlook and attitude toward the situation), and make the most of it. Trying to do much more than that seems like a foolish pursuit and I don’t know about you, but my Mom didn’t raise a fool! 😊 Speaking of which: Hey Mom, we miss you!