Woeful knowledge & service from Discovery Insure, and how that costs you money!

Some weeks ago, I called Discovery Insure to better understand the Vehicle Servicing benefit they offer clients whose vehicles are out of service plan. The online descriptions are fairly confusing, even for a long-time Discovery Insure client and a qualified short-term insurance actuary. What transpired over the coming weeks is the realization that most DI agents know less about their products than I do…which, as you can imagine, served only to my financial detriment! Below is an abridged account of my engagements with a slew of different agents who exercised a severe lack of customer care, revealed material disparities in their product knowledge, displayed a willingness to delay responses, ignore my requests, fabricate information, obfuscate calculations, and sometimes just lie! Agent 1 (Favela?) 13 July – had no clue that the servicing benefit existed at all and tried to sell me a vehicle warranty (a completely different product) altogether. We mutually established that she was not the person to answer my question and she offered to have a more knowledgeable colleague (Gift Msimango) call me later that day. Agent 2: (Fulo) 14 Jul – After not hearing from Gift, I called in the following day and chatted to a lovely agent who also didn’t know the service product offering. She however, referred my question to her line manager as well as reminding Gift to call me. Agent 3: (Sinethemba) 17 July – several days later and after still not having heard from Fulo’s Manager or Gift, I called in and spoke to a lovely and (seemingly) knowledgeable agent, Sinethemba. He explained that the discounts offered for services at Motus and Bosch were identical and that I was free to engage the services of either, for the same benefit (Spoiler alert: They are not and they actually have different qualifying criteria). He also, proceeded to give me an illustration of how the discount would work – I should’ve picked up then and there that his woefully-explained example evidenced (once again) a lack of product knowledge. He also advised that whichever workshop I went to, they were fami**** with the Discovery process and there was no need for me to advise the workshop beforehand (Ps. Mercedes (Motus) had no clue at the point of booking, at check-in, nor at payment). This interaction was with a courteous and helpful agent but sadly, his knowledge was left wanting. Agent 4: (Charles) 19 July – after having taken my vehicle to Mercedes Sandton on 19 July, where they had no idea of the Discovery process, I called into the DI contact centre and managed to reach Charles. He seemed more senior than the others and definitely more well-versed than previous agents. He very quickly diagnosed the issue (I ought to have gone to a Bosch, not a Motus, workshop) and took meticulous notes based on my previous engagements with other DI agents. He promised to give me feedback within 72 hours (you can guess where this is going) but also asked me to spell out who and when I had spoken to (don’t you have systems to do this Discovery?). I wonder what would’ve happened if I weren’t able to produce info regarding my previous interactions – might it have meant that Discovery’s fault would be at my cost because I hadn’t documented their failures? After more than 72 hours had elapsed and after unsuccessful attempts at contacting Charles – despite chatting to several other agents (including and not limited to Vuyani 25 July, Phambile(?) 31 July, Mabhulale (?) 1 August) it took forever to get ahold of Charles. We had sporadic conversations over a protracted period where he: Advised that he had not called because he was not allowed to make outbound calls (this despite the fact that he managed to call me on other occasions) Had not called because he was sending me email updates. To that point I had received no emails. I provided him an alternate email address to the one he could see on my profile and still did not receive anything for another week. When I later chatted to him about the lack of promised emails he blatantly told me that the fact that I had not received any emails from him was “something we needed to move past and rather work towards the future”…so much for having kept his word from before. On 3 August, an amount of R1,232.72 was paid into my account. Despite umpteen attempts to elicit feedback from Charles on how this amount was calculated, he refused to engage in more than one-line utterances which gave little insight into the calculation. Amongst these were: “We authorized a R1500 payment via the Finance team, I’m not sure why you were paid what you were paid.” “You qualified for a Discount based on your current Vitality Drive status of Gold.” However, this is incorrect as I held a higher status of Diamond at the time of the service, and ought to have qualified for a higher discount. The Vitality Drive benefit rules clearly state that the status as per the date of service prevails when it comes to the applicable discount percentage. Talk about being tone deaf to your own peers’ failings, whilst Charles acknowledged that there had been multiple agent errors in misinforming me, he found it fitting to warn me against going to the wrong workshop franchise in future. After failing to receive a cogent response from Discovery and having received an ex gratia payment that came without explanation and is woefully less than the financial cost to me, I want Discovery to provide me a full-breakdown of their calculation and to reimburse me the difference between the ex gratia payment and the discount that would’ve been app**** had I visited a Bosch, rather than a Motus dealership.