Insure policy and vitality drive benefits severely negatively affected by misinformation by Insure consultant and refusal from insure department to resolve the issue.

Wrong information by a claims consultant caused my policy to be badly affected which has caused a cascade of issues while the claims department continually dodges the responsibility for over 7 months and does not seem to want to resolve the dispute.

In March this year I had a accident in the parking area of a golf course due to negligence by the golf course. They had removed a tree but left the tree stump inside one of marked the parking bays with no warning or sign. The time of the accident was in the evening and due to there being bad light, and hight of my vehicle and the angle at which I was driving into the parking bay I could not see the stump and drove over it which caused serious damage to my car. I knew that this blatant negligence was grounds for having their insurance covering the incident.

I spoke to a discovery insure consultant to enquire how I should go about getting this claim done as I did not want to go through discovery if it would affect my policy or benefits. I was told on the phone that discovery insure's legal team could do a recovery and that upon successful recovery my benefits would not be affected. I was not informed that regardless of successful recovery my benefits would be affected. This was why I asked for advise but was not given the correct information by the claims consultant. If I had been given the correct information I would not have allowed discovery to take care of the claim.

Because of this information I allowed Discovery to initiate the claim and in the end the claim was recovered from the third party.

I later realised that my vitality drive status had been changed from Diamond to sliver and when I questioned this and instructed the recovery department that I was told my policy would not be affected they insured me that they would send an email to get this sorted out. After several weeks of not hearing anything I phoned again. This carried on for several months where I would phone every few weeks to get to the bottom of this. All emails that was internally sent was seemingly ignored by the claims consultant who wrongly advised me.

While this was ongoing I had to get my car serviced but would now not receive the discount for service that my Diamond vitality drive status would have afforded me.

I got in touch with the vitality drive department for advice on getting my status reinstated and my discount app****. I was informed that I should go ahead with the service as they can issue me a refund when my issue has been resolved and that they could reinstate my diamond status as this was due to a staff error from the insure side.

Through a consultant in the vitality drive department I was put in touch with the team leader from the Insure Department and was given the runaround for another almost 2 months while I tried to get them to pull the audio from that phone call to prove to the vitality drive side that there was a staff error.

Eventually the team leader from vitality drive responded, however, she said that she listened to the audio recordings but they did not have the info I claimed. I enquired about the dates of the recordings she was referring to and she had excluded phone recordings from the week when I issued the claim.

I then requested the audio recordings from the week of the claim. This took another few weeks to resolve. I was then informed by the team leader from insure that the audio in question exists and that the consultant advised me about both claiming through Discovery and the 3rd party. She did not address the fact that the consultant wrongly advised me that my policy would not be affected if there is a successful claim which was what the dispute was about. She knew full well that I had said that I was wrongly informed by the consultant and she failed to address that from the audio. The vitality drive consultant refuses to confirm what was said in the audio and the claims department tries to obfuscate and not take responsibility after trying to avoid and ignore my dispute for over half a year.

I then requested to receive the audio recording myself so that I could listen to it.

In the audio it is clear that I was wrongly advised.

In the recording the following transpired:

05min44sec Me “If I go through discovery it’s going to affect my premiums and stuff right?”

06min12sec Consultant “If it happens that the claim gets recovered, we do recover the funds, then of course the claim will be marked as a recovered claim. But now if it happens that somehow we are not recovering, these guys are not able to assist us then unfortunately the claim will remain under your name.

06min27sec Me “ I see, ok, so if it’s a recovered claim then it doesn’t affect my policy?” Consultant “Yes sir, that’s right”

08:18 Me “Would you kindly just pop me an email, just stating that if this claim is recovered then it won’t affect my policy just so I have it on paper.” Consultant “Not an issue sir, I will send you an email, you can expect an email in the next five minutes."

Discovery has made it impossible to get a very simple issue resolved which has badly affected my experience as a loyal customer who have worked hard to get and maintain Diamond status for the benefits.