Ineffective Surprise Reward complaint procedure

Discovery Health works with Discovery Vitality in a way that if members tries to live a healthy lifestyle (lowering their risk of claiming from the medical aid) Vitality is supposed to be a reward system for these members by giving them cheaper flights, active rewards, cheaper movies etc. One of Vitality’s latest products being Surprise Rewards. According to the Surprise Reward rules the member must make sure that the points reflect in time regardless whether there is a problem with Discovery’s IT system.

I mostly use the Active and Surprise Rewards because they are a weekly occurrence which are easily accessible (i.e. do not have to travel to get rewarded etc.). From a consumer perspective the Surprise Reward product has two aspects: Guaranteed aspect i.e. if you exercise regularly and obtain your goal streak you will get a surprise reward opportunity and an Uncer*****y aspect i.e. Spin the wheel and see whether you got a vacation. This review is ONLY about the Guaranteed aspect of the Surprise Reward product.

So, the following scenario comes into play: A member is trying to live healthy by frequently exercising the past 3 weeks but, he/she needs one more reward to get a surprise reward. Discovery's IT systems does not always allocate all the points due to system errors (Even if you do manual syncs, reinstall the apps etc) and in this case it is the fitness event on the Thursday and/or Friday which was not allocated. The goal cycle closes at Friday midnight, but the member has until Tuesday Midnight to get the points allocated. By Saturday morning the member notices that not all the points were allocated but Vitality states that it takes between 24 and 48 hours for points to reflect (And if you try to log an official call before the 48 Hours has passed they simply refuse to help you by telling you to wait 48 hours). Since, 48 hours has not passed the member needs to wait until Sunday Morning to check whether the points have been allocated. In the meantime, the member might want to do another round of reinstalling the app and doing a manual sync in the hope that the glitch is just temporary. Sunday Morning arrives, and the points are not allocated thus, the member needs to log an official call, but it is Sunday and the Discovery Health/Vitality call centre is closed. He/she sends an email with the necessary details to log the call getting an immediate automatic reply which states that it may take 48 business hours to get a response from the call centre (this is not yet the official logged call).

The best-case scenario is, the call centre responds to the members email on Monday morning telling him/her that it has been logged with their systems team (this is the official logged call) and the investigation can take between 3 and 5 working days (Personal experience, it generally takes 3 working days to get a response from the systems team).

Doing the calculations, it is clear, there is no way that the points are going to be allocated in time to receive the surprise reward.

The best-case scenario is, they just allocate the points after the 3 working days (since they already have the proof for the fitness event) but, you won’t receive you surprise rewards because these points were ‘late’ due to all the waiting times. (If the customer logs another complaint with Discovery, they just say that it is a ‘late’ event even if it was manually allocated due to a system error)

Worst case they give you some more steps (which you might have tried previously) to see whether the problem disappears from the system and once again you still won’t receive the benefit of the Surprise Reward for the same reason is above.

I am not sure whether any of Discovery’s other products are also implemented in such a way that it is impossible to operate within the rules (especially when problems arise). Usually in customer relations, the customer is correct, and, in this case, it is quite clear that Discovery was at fault, yet Discovery still enforce rules as if everything was operating normally and they are not willing to fully rectify the fault. Customers pay extra to be part of Vitality for the rewards, but the product is designed in a way that if Discovery is wrong they refer to their rules.