Oct 02, 2011 10:09 PM
4360 Views
There is a bit of a hype these days about buying insurance policies online. The Economic Times and other financial newspapers tell you that they are cheaper and convenient – all one has to do is to pay by credit card, and you buy the policy.
I feel that the journalists of The Economic Times are rather naive, in the sense that they may never had bought a policy online. Buying a policy is neither easy nor hassle free. My advice: don’t even try it. Call someone locally and buy the policy. My experience of buying an online policy from policybazaar.com shows that one should buy a policy from policybazaar.com only if you have a lot of spare time to follow up with them. Either they are incompetent or just not bothered about their customers.
I bought a car insurance renewal policy from policybazaar.com. The full payment was made to policybazaar.com on September 11, 2011 after filling in the complete form, giving my address and phone number. Immediately they sent me a threatening e-mail that I should send my documents or else they would cancel the policy and deduct 2.5% of the amount.
Thereafter, I sent the documents(after a great deal of difficulty(getting the documents scanned from somewhere and sending from somewhere) topolicybazaar.com.
They went off to sleep for some time. After several reminders, I received a mail from one Mr Manoj Tomar with a scanned copy of the Proposal form. It did not mention from which office of National Insurance the proposal form had been issued. My address on it was wrong. The fellows had not bothered to see what data had been filled out in their own form!
I wrote back to Mr Manoj Tomar and policybazaar.com.no reply. After many tries I was told that the address would be corrected and the policy sent “ASAP.”
Till date I have not received my policy. Neither Mr Manoj Tomar nor policybazaar.com customer care is responding to my e-mails. I do not know when I will be able to get the documents. I am worried that if something happens in the meantime, how am I going to make a claim?
Buy a policy from policybazaar.com only if you have patience. They will pester you once you register on their site, but once the payment is made, they will all go to sleep. Their customer care is also not equipped to answer queries. I agree with another writer that policybazaar is full of as$holes.
My advice: avoid these online insurance brokers such as policybazaar.com. Buy it from someone local instead.
