Insurers go to any length to lure new customers, but when the time comes for payback, they often try to drag the claim proceedings and delay payments

I had a pension policy from Max New York Life (MNYL), which I surrendered in April 2012. However, I did not receive the cheque and enquired as to what was happened to it. MNYL’s Pune office took roughly eight days to inform me that the cheque was dispatched on 18th April.

I therefore contacted their courier, an international company, Express-IT. They informed me that, as per their records, the cheque was delivered on 24th April and had an acknowledgement signed by me along with my mobile number. Upon hearing this, I thought that I had misplaced or lost the cheque. I therefore asked MNYL to issue “Stop Payment” instructions to their bank, which they did promptly. In the meantime the bank also confirmed that the said cheque remains unpaid at their end, which was a big relief.

Now started the big drama. I received a courier from MNYL through Express IT in May which was duly received by my wife. To my surprise, the envelope contained a cheque of redemption bearing the same number as the original one which was presumed to have been lost by me. I purposely banked the cheque knowing that it should bounce as payment was stopped.

I contacted MNYL to complain that the original cheque was received only now. I had to speak to a lot of people for this but that was possible because my wife is my advisor! I also spoke to Express-IT and asked to see the POD on which my signature was supposedly there. After considerable trouble they showed it to me and it was clear that nobody had signed it and the signature was someone else’s.

It seemed that the courier person took my phone number from the window envelope and “signed it off”. I complained to the courier company. They stalled me for a long time by saying that they were investigating the matter! When I asked them to compensate me for the delay of nearly one month, their customer relationship department flatly refused and told me to claim the compensation form MNYL!

A few months back my aunt had found a number of packets of the same company dumped in her building compound. She took the trouble of locating their office and returned them. This is the total callous approach of an international courier company!

I then wrote to MNYL asking for interest for the delay and the inconvenience caused for no fault of mine. I had told their officials that I expected them to pay me interest, which they had accepted. Now it has been more than 15 days since I put the request in writing. I have received three SMSs from MNYL that they were processing my request and will get back to me in three days. The first message was received on 6th June and the final one on 11th June!

With all new admirable advertising by MNYL, the customer still is where he always was!

This same company had once told me that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) does not allow policyholders to pay their premium in advance through ECS. I had to fight with them before they apologized and admitted that if they invoked the name of RBI or IRDA most of their clients would believe it!

In short all service providers are the same. Customers are at their mercy and that’s what they love!