I’m staying

So this is a tough one, cause my experience changed from extremely bad, to extremely good. I was involved in an accident on the 12th November, the claims assistant who first handled my claim was just not interested in working. She went on leave without handing my claim to someone else or even giving me some feedback. So I had to call discovery everyday following up and I would get told the same thing over and over. It really frustrated me that I was the only one doing all the calling, but I had to choice since they’re panelbeaters had my car. I escalated the query. Then I was offered a courtesy car, which I had not taken initially (obviously I paid for it, but they still cared enough not to inconvenience me, so they backdated the option and I had a car in all the madness) As festive was approaching, things got worse. I couldn’t get hold of anyone and ofcos, I had no idea what was happening with my car, I had no idea if insurance would pay or not. All I knew was where the car was. Ultimately, I told them to assemble my car, I planned to go fetch it and fix it myself because I couldn’t take the tourter anymore. At that point. Things really started changing. Note. I lost both my parents in car accidents. So I was incredibly shaken and emotional after my accident and the accident triggered a whole lot of emotions which I had kept hidden. I went through painful, dark depression basically. Discovery arranged a trauma counselor who came to my house. After one long session. She felt I needed to be referred to a clinical psychologist. Talking to her helped because honestly. I thought I would be okay with time, I was not aware that I still held on to that much pain. Since I experienced this horrid service from discovery. I obviously tweeted my feelings and warned people against insuring with discovery. Then I was subsequently contacted by Theo Mokhine, the Exec Relationship Manager from the Sandton office. He doesn’t know about all my drama with my parents or whatever, he just cared about his job and making sure that I was okay. I never got to meet him, obviously; but I really felt like he cared. He would call and email me even when he went on leave. He literally went out of his way to give me great service. To a point, where I even felt like he and I were friends, he made me feel like it/I really mattered to him that I was okay at the end of it all. I had all the intentions to cancel ALL my policies with discovery (I have a few) but dealing with Theo, made me change my mind and I’ve decided that I’m staying. I’m an Accountant by training, but I’ve been running my own business since 2013. As an entrepreneur, a part of me understood why Discovery had to do their own investigations to confirm if my claim was indeed a valid one. I mean, the insurance industry loses a lot of money from ********** claims. So maybe sometimes it’s hard to see what’s real and what’s not. Yes. At some point, I felt I was being treated like a ********. Like I went out of my way to literally cause an accident (which could have ended my life by the way) but anyway. I really understand why they had to do follow the steps that they did, though it was incredibly traumatic from the receiving end. Things certainly have to improve from their end. They desperately have to focus on training their call center. Those are the first people we interact with. Fazeela was my claims assistant apparently, she’s the one who just went on leave and gave me 0 feedback. She eventually sent me an email saying my car was drivable with ONE working headlight. So she didn’t understand why I was overreacting. The nerve! Matilda doesn’t deserve to work in customer service. She’s just pathetic. The less said about her, the better. She can’t even read a quote, so she doesn’t just need training on customer service. She needs to go back to primary school and learn her numbers. She was the most condescending actually. Thami didn’t follow procedure, she made me call BMW for quotes as the discovery panelbeaters were closed for holidays. Dominic unfortunately had to deal with an angry client from a query which had absolutely nothing to do with him, but he and Thami ended up escalating my query to Theo who was fantastic. The long and short of this essay. I’m staying with Discovery Insure and I take back everything (bad) I said about them. They really do care for their clients. Thanks a mil to Theo & Dominic. Discovery has Theo in particular, to thank for my business.