Please dont ask too many questions!!

After a previous complaint, Shaun Thotharam crossed my path. When I unexpectedly had another problem with Hosmed, I e-mailed Shaun to seek assistance as I understood that he was a supervisor at Hosmed. He did provide short answers on my queries. As I am not in the Medical Aid profession, some of the answers were not clear to me. I tried phoning him, but was informed by one of the call centre agents that Shaun is not going to accept my call and will reply via e-mail (which he did).

At the time I have been waiting a week and a half for hospital authorization (it is two weeks now) and asked Shaun why the authorization is taking so long, or if there was a problem. Due to the fact that my employer is sending me away for business, I wil not be available until the day before the operation should some more information/quotations be required before authorization can be done. Shaun has not rep**** on my e-mail, so I stil do not know what the problem is.

I have phoned twice to try and determine what the problem with the authorization is, as something like that is normally done within 20 minutes over the phone. Every time I am told to wait, they will get back to me soon. Two weeks later I am still waiting. I can not phone the anaesthetist to try and negotiate a better tariff, as I do not have authorization.

I have realized now that Hosmed is only a good medical aid as long as you are not claiming. Due to unforeseen circumstances we had to claim in recent months when my husband developed severe sleep apnea, and then I developed calcifications in my shoulder which must be surgically removed. Previous years we just had normal doctors visit, prescriptions, etc. This year, when we actually needed the medical aid, we are being treated by the Hosmed personnel as if they are doing as a favour, not as valuable, paying clients.

If I look at all the other complaints I can see that bad service is the norm and not the exception. Hosmed should value its clients more and working on building good customer relations.