B-WARE OF B-SURE – TRUST ME, YOU DON’T WANT TO GO DOWN THIS ROAD!

Oh my goodness - where do I start? If I could give minus 20 stars, I would. The B-Sure consultant started by giving me a few quotes from different companies – at that stage, it looked as though Centriq (aka Santam) was the best option. I asked B-Sure about Discovery and was told that even though they do act as their brokers, the premium would be a lot higher than the price they quoted me for Centriq. I decided to take their word for it and was put through to another consultant to set things up, and she sent me the policy documents.

There were a few items in the policy relating to the excess that I was not happy with, so I decided to contact Discovery myself and find out what a policy with them would cost. I was stunned to discover that not only would the policy be cheaper, but there was NO excess. And of course, not having to go through B-Sure, there would be no activation fee. It was a no-brainer - I signed up with Discovery and immediately contacted B-Sure to cancel my policy. After struggling for several hours and sending emails and messages, I finally managed to speak to the consultant. She asked me if I’d like to use B-Sure as my broker for the Discovery policy. Yup, she actually asked that! My response – no, thank you; Discovery has given me the help I needed without having to pay a R1200 activation fee.She told me to contact SAU to cancel the policy, which I did and received a confirmation of cancellation fairly promptly.

A few days later, at the beginning of May, I took delivery of my car, with Discovery confirmed as my insurers. I was flabbergasted when, on 26 May, B-Sure debited R1200 from my bank account. I immediately contacted them; they said they would contact the dealership to confirm that I wasn’t insured with Centriq when I took delivery of my car and said they’d get back to me the same day. I didn’t hear from them, so the next day I arranged to have the debit reversed on my bank account, which cost me an additional R80.

I thought that would be the end of my woes. But nooooo! On 23 August (3 months later!), I received a bank notification that a B-Sure registered mandate had been logged. I contacted my bank, but was unable to reverse the Debisure mandate, which was no longer R1200, but R1350! I was so upset and stressed by this situation that my husband contacted B-Sure on my behalf. Many calls back and forth, on 26 August, he finally managed to speak to the Marketing Manager who was most apologetic and assured us the debit would be stopped immediately. He also said he’d send us an email confirming that no further attempts would be made to debit my account. Did either of those things happen? Nope – the next day, 27 August, R1350 was debited from my account.

Unless B-Sure immediately refunds this debit, my next step will be to report them to the Ombudsman. And B-Sure, if you do respond to this, please spare me your platitudes and just do what you’re supposed to do, because every single promise you have made so far has been broken.