Dec 18, 2006 05:36 PM
6450 Views
(Updated Jun 30, 2008 03:35 PM)
I have a policy - Unit Gain with Bajaj Allianz. When I first signed up for the policy their service was good and they promptly sent me the policy document. Thereafter, whenever I have wanted assistance from them, I found that they are unhelpful and work as though they are a government organisation.
I happened to pay my premium for this year twice (due to an error) and having done that wanted them to refund me the excess premium paid. However, inspite of numerous calls to the helpline, their branch and their Grievances department at their head office, I have not been able to any satisfactory response from them. During, this process I found following issues:
Their Toll-Free helpline is unhelpful. When you do reach someone, they tell you that the computer system is down and hence you have to get your query sorted out by the branch! The toll-free number also advises you to press some buttons on your phone to reach the appropriate person and when you do so, you are disconnected.
The feedback section in their website is a hoax. I put in all details of my query relating to refund to this section and have never heard from them.
If there is one private sector insurance company with a government like attitude Bajaj Allianz is it. I found that they won't take phone calls during lunch (a full hour!) and their head office itself won't take calls at the board number one second after 5.00 p.m.
Don't expect apologies or help when you call them. They all hear you out, defend themselves and then promise to do things, which they won't. To get a receipt for my excess payment, I had to call them several times and then had to speak to the Branch Manager at their Victoria Road, Bangalore to get the problem sorted out. The Branch Manager promised to send me the refund and it has not come in even three weeks later.
I found this to be the first company where staff complain to the customers about the staff's helplessness in getting their own Head Office to help them! For e.g. they have the wrong telephone numbers of Bangalore branch printed in their premium notice. When this was pointed out to Bajaj Allianz staff at Bangalore, they said they too had done so with their Head Office and still stationery with wrong number was being sent by their HO at Pune. When I asked the Assistant Manager at Victoria Road about the refund, he confided that they are centralised and no branch can help the customer even if they want to. To all my queries, his standard reply was that they had contacted the HO and that only the HO could help me and that he could not commit anything on behalf of the HO.
The last and most difficult issue to deal with is their inability to share numbers of their managers with customers. I called their Grievance department who too had no idea of how soon could my problem be resolved or how it would be resolved. When I asked for the telephone number of their Marketing Manager who also works in the same office, they would not give me his number. They also refused to share the telephoe number of their CEO with a customer. On being coaxed, I was promised that they would call back and give me their numbers and haven't.
Added on June 30, 2008: I have found this insurance company still a very unresponsive and uncaring one. They have not sent me a Unit Statement for last year and when I called their toll free helpline (it works!) they told me they are not obliged to send us unit statements! It is another matter that the other insurance companies dutifully send such statements to their customers. Further, even the statement they sent last year is a very poor one, being printed on white paper so that they can save costs of not using stationery. This is how one of the three largest insurers in India works - by not being willing to spend even under a hundred rupees for sending annual statements to their customers while charging them thousands of rupees towards policies. You decide whether it is worth buying policies from this insurer - who is big in name and fame but poor in attitude and service.
