LIC as known as Life Insurance Corporation of India has a website https://LicIndia.com; A neat looking website is of no use.
I created an account with this portal in the year 2005. One is supposed to enroll their policies and wait for 15 days for activation of the policies. Ok, I did wait... but not 15 days around 2 months. Finally I got an email and thought of checking these. The day when I tried to login there was some sort of problems on that website and did not display even a single page after the home page. I waited, refreshed, hit and back and forward button, changed the browser and everything failed. I thought probably this was a problem for a day, I tried to login the next day and still failed.
Finally one day I got inside and learnt about the facilities offered by this website. No online payments were possible then.
Most Funniest part:They display the next due date on this website as a hyperlink. We as users or policy holders are expected to click on this URL if the due date is not correct. If we click there, they will update the correct due date within 3 working days. Is this an online system? Why should you computerize like this?
Two months before I discovered that LIC started accepting online payments, and told my agent that I will make payments online now onwards. On 28-Sep-2006, at 2100hrs, I started the online payment process, which goes as below.
BillDesk.com has put up the online payment facility for LIC
I selected 6 policies that are due to be paid.
The page redirected to BillDesk and asked for confirmation
Used my ICICI netbanking facility to make the payment.
Payment completed
I was NOT brought back to the LIC website, even then the payment went through.
Minutes later I got 3 Emails from LIC - 3 copies of the same email with a premium receipt attached to it.
I got worried, doubting Billdesk for deducting thrice from my account found in ICICI online account that payment was deducted only once.
Registered a Complaint to bring this issue into LIC's attention on the very same day. No response till date.
It did not make much worry to me since money was only deducted once from my account.
Now after waiting to hear from LIC for a week I registered another complaint For not attending to my old complaint for more than a week. Another week passed by nothing happend.
Yesterday 16-Oct-2006, I wrote an email as a reply to the Premium receipt that I received thru email, with a copy to support@BillDesk.com detailing all that what happend in my case. Moments later, email to licindia@licindia.com bounced like a rubber ball.
Support@BillDesk.com received the email and wrote a standard reply:
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Thank you for contacting us.
Please provide the Transaction Number, Date and time of the transaction to assist you further.
Assuring you the best of services all the time.
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The idiot who responded to my email did not even take time to see all these details provided. And he writes "Assuring you the bestof services all the time"
Finally thought of writing a sarcastic email to BillDesk. Composed the email, hit the send button... BOOOM !!! support@billdesk.com also bounced...
What a pitty...???
I picked up the phone called the Chennai center of Bill Desk... Furious of what happened, I spoke to a Lady who said she will revert on my complaint after checking the status. She calls me moments after and tells me that BillDesk has processed the transaction and handed over to LIC, but LIC has not updated the status for last 18 days. She gave me a telephone number for me to contact. I tried reaching that number and got the response from BSNL "Please check the NUMBER you have dialled" - What to do now????
Please guys, be careful dealing with LIC online. Also, this is my experience, I donno what it would be for you. So be aware of the possibilities....
I will update this review once I complete the process and get this corrected.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Edit on 06-Nov-2006 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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I sent emails to Divisional Managers of Chennai & Ernakulam, with copies to insurance ombudsman. An LIC employee got in touch with me through an email on 26-Oct-2006 saying that he is receipt of my email and will get back to me the very next day with an update. After a week past and since there were no emails from this Gentleman, I wrote a reminder, for which he replied with the updates. The acknowledged the receipt of the payment... (done a month before)... with an appology saying that LIC Servicing Branch has not received the updates, for which they are working now.
Is this online business? When you could buy products over interenet and get it shipped within days, LIC has also put up a online payment portal, which has only to collect the money online and give credit, takes more than a month to service a payment.
Think of the case, if they were to ship a physical product. ha ha ha... Problem still in the unsolved state, I am waiting for the status of my policies to be updated at the Servicing Branch of LIC. Never know, this might take another month, by then, the next due date is close... ha ha..
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Edit on 15-Nov-2006 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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After a long wait and door knocking Mr. S Rajan of LIC of India finally confirmed the receipt of payment and credited the amount towards the policies. He also mentioned that the servicing branch has not been updated about this. I am not sure when this would happen?
What an Online Payment System??? Date of payment 28 Sep - Payment realization 07 Nov.
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Madhu
