A Customer Service Story

I recently left one of my insurance agents because of poor customer service. The whole situation could have been easily avoided, and I’d like to share the story with you in the hopes that you can prevent this from happening.

One of my policies carries a unique rider which allows me to collect a check if I ever spend the night at the hospital. Earlier this year, I checked into the hospital for a few days for some routine testing. Before my stay, I called the agency to let them know that I would be staying in the hospital and find out what I needed to do to claim my hospital income. They assured me they would send a form to me via mail as soon as possible.

My stay came and went, weeks went by, and no hospital income form came from my insurance agent. So I called them again, spoke to someone else, explained the whole situation over again, and had the form in my mailbox two days later. I filled it out promptly and sent it back.

After a month or two, I received a letter from the insurer stating that they needed some verification form or another — frankly, there was a lot of agent jargon in it, and I had no idea what I was reading. I called my hospital and read the letter to them, and they said in order to send the form to me they needed the permission of my insurer (I don’t pretend to understand how all of this works, so I just went with it). Once again, I called my agent and explained the situation. I gave them the phone number for my hospital and the name of the person I had spoken with, and they promised me they would take care of it.

So when I got another letter from the insurer a few months later, I assumed it was my check. Wrong. It was simply a notice, nearly identical to the first one, that my claim couldn’t be processed until they had the form they needed. I called my agent again, and had to leave several messages before I eventually got through.