Worst Insurer

On the 21st of September 2021, I had a house break in incident. The perpetrators took Car keys, Gate remotes, 65” Hisence TV, Carbon Road bike and drove off with my Range Rover Evoque. I reported the incident immediately through the Discovery emergency assist hotline and to SAPS. Soon as the perpetrators were leaving, I tried to track the vehicle from the Discovery Insure App and realised that the tracker was not working anymore. It was showing that the vehicle is still parked at my house. A few minutes after I had reported the incident, I got a call back from the discovery control room from a male agent whose name I cannot remember as I was still in a state of shock. He was checking how I was and advising me that I have access to a security guard but I would have to provide shelter and that I have access to trauma counselling. He then asked if I had a second tracker on the vehicle and I told him that I do not know if there is one. The following day on the 22nd of September 2021 at 9:17pm I got a call from a person called Sibukeli, (similar voice to the previous caller from the control room) from a cell phone number +***7 saying that he is calling from discovery. He would like to find out how I would like to proceed with the claim. Whether I wanted to wait until the vehicle was recovered or proceed with the claim. I told him that I don’t know how the procedures work, you should be the one advising. I also told him that someone else from discovery had contacted me regarding the claim, so I will send them the documents they asked for. He then asked me to cc him on all the communications and sent me an SMS with his email address. The email address is ***. A few hours later at around 23:00Hrs I get a call from police constables claiming to be from Ivory Park saying that they had recovered my vehicle somewhere in Tembisa/Ivory Park and where the vehicle is parked the tow truck cannot easily reach it so they were wondering if I had the spare keys to the vehicle. I told them I do have spare keys but I do not keep them but my sister does. The police constable said they can dispatch a vehicle from CAP security who they work with to fetch the spare key from my sister. I did not disclose who my sister was and where she stays because I realised that something was not right. I dismissed the call and immediately called National Police, who then advised me not to give anyone the spare keys reasons being; 1. There is a procedure that the police are supposed to follow, they should just Tow the vehicle to the police impound and not ask for any spare keys. 2. There is a police case opened, they have to communicate with the investigating officer not me 3. The police impound does not work at night So National police advised me that it was a **** and then dispatched a vehicle from Douglasdale Police Station to check what was going on. As I was speaking to the National police, I started getting calls from the police officers and I kept ignoring them. Next thing soon as I dropped the call I’m getting a call from my sister saying there is someone at her gate from CAP security saying that they are here to fetch spare keys. I immediately informed her not to give anyone the keys. The driver from CAP security also called from my sister’s gate saying he has arrived and I asked him where he got the information about my sister’s address and he said he was given coordinates by his control room. I called the CAP security control room and they would not disclose who gave them the instruction to dispatch the security guy but they are working with Discovery and the police. The police officers from ivory Park called with the following cell phone numbers; +***4 and +***4. The police from Douglasdale arrived also after a short while and I gave them the events of what has been taking place and they went to my sister’s place to check what was going on there. They got there and spoke to the security guard from CAP security and somehow he managed to convince them that it was a legit recovery. The same policeman from Douglasdale called me back with the CAP security guard saying I should give them the key because the police officers that were calling me earlier are legit cops. I continued to refuse to release the spare key and asked them to be the ones to escort me to the so called recovery site and they refused and left. I continued to get aggressive calls from the Ivory Park police, that time with a different cell phone number and I still refused to give them the spare key. Eventually there was a call from Discovery from the same Sibukeli person from Discovery, now calling from the discovery control room landline number that called me back when I reported the theft. He was telling me to give the spare keys to the CAP security person. Discovery will take full responsibility of what happens. I continued to refuse to give out the keys. The police officers continued calling me, threatening that they are going to leave the car they cannot guard the car overnight. I still refused to give out the keys as I was now fully aware of what was going on. I then asked them to send a police Van to come fetch me and take me and my brother to where the vehicle is, and that was when they stopped calling. I also then switched off my phone as it was now around 01:00Hrs. That was the last I heard about the **** vehicle recovery. I reported the incident to Discovery the following morning of the 23rd of September 2021, and they said they would investigate and come back to me. No one called me back. On the 28th of September, I was just going through my phone and just checked the discovery app, I realised that the tracker was back online and my car was now showing that it was somewhere on Main Reef Road, I phoned Discovery control room and they said they would verify and call back. They never called back. I called the police and they came and checked the location and told me that it looks like a police impound in Benoni and advised me to go and check. I called Discovery back and that’s when they confirmed that yes it was indeed my vehicle and it was at the Police impound and that was that. There was no advice on next steps or anything. I went the morning of the 29th of September to the police impound as advised by the police and cleared the vehicle out of the impound. The paperwork at the police impound showed that the vehicle had been dropped off on the 22nd of September 2021 at 3:30pm contrary to what the tracking device showed that is 23rd of September 2021 around 1:30pm. There was no feedback from Discovery regarding the incident that I had reported, until a friend posted something regarding the incident on the Discovery twitter page. I was later on called and told by Discovery that it was part of procedure that their consultants can call from their private phones at that time of the night as Mr Sibukile had done, at the same time they could have done better. That was that from Discovery. No explanation as to how the tracker came back online a few days later. Why they couldn’t find the vehicle themselves as it had been parked at the police impound for 5 days. How the CAP security got hold of my sister’s details? All those questions remain unanswered to date. Over and above that trauma, I have not received my vehicle back since the 30th of September 2021 that I dropped it off at Riverside Auto Body for Assessment under Discovery Claim. The car had damages and had been stripped during the *******. There was no proper assessment done on the vehicle leading to parts going on back orders twice. I have emailed Discovery asking for a courtesy vehicle, with no response to date from Discovery.