No maternity benefits because of non-registration

I’ve been with Discovery Health for close to 15 years, with 2 sons being born while on various plans through the years. Carefully selecting a plan that will fit our budget and circumstances. Through the years I’ve always been aware of Vitality and registering for Baby benefits and only at a later stage getting hospital pre-authorisation when I receive the necessary codes from my doctor. I’ve always done all of these admin work on behalf of our family With our latest little on its way, I’ve again registered for Vitality and where unaware of an additional registration to be able to benefit from free consultations and blood tests during my wife’s pregnancy. I’ve only ever received emails stating that Discovery won’t pay because we don’t have a Savings Plan, not that I have not registered. Today after studying the benefits for Coastal Core I realised that I’ve been coughing up for bills that should have been covered by Discovery. I phoned the call centre and were informed that I need to register separately for this benefit, apart from Vitality. This is very confusing and can’t be done from my App or online profile, but only from my wife’s. So I’ve spent in excess of R3500 on consultations, scans and blood tests already and I’m now unable to claim these back. Since I am paying for this benefit and because it’s not made that obvious to register in two places for the same “event”, I therefore need Discovery to pay out the money I already spent.

Discovery did an utterly poor job at notifying their customers to register their pregnancies in order to get maternity benefits in 2018. Surely after registering for Vitality Baby they would know we are in fact pregnant and would need my maternity benefits in 2018. If this issue cannot be resolved to my satisfaction I will have to re-assess my membership with the yearly option to switch to Momentum.