7 year customer never filed a claim, nickle and dimed out of R1400 and a month long claim process.

I have been a King Price customer for over 7 years, and never filed a claim until I was recently ******. Over the years I have been a strong advocate of their service as their roadside service and sales departments have been very efficient and effective. However, I'm revising my review of them down to 2 stars from 5 due to my recent claim experience:

After getting ******, I contacted KP and spoke with their claims adjuster. The process was fairly straight forward, but after about a week I heard back from the adjuster (even at this early stage there didn't seem to be the same efficiency or urgency of my typical sales interactions with KP). Unfortunately, and to my disappointment, the assessment was about R5,000 short of what my contract entitled me to. I brought this up with the adjuster and she put me in touch with her superior, who confirmed two issues:

1.) I was claiming for some headphones that were valued at around R7,000. Even though this was stated on my contract, they were trying to only pay me something like R4,000. I've been paying a premium that is based on this initial valuation, so this was obviously unfair, and looking at the market, the replacement cost was actually closer to R8,000, so their position here was clearly incorrect.

2.) They claimed that my excess had more than doubled based on an email that I had never received. In all prior interactions with KP, if there were any material changes to my agreement, they were mutually agreed upon and I received an updated contract with the new terms. For some reason, with this material change that only benefitted KP, they seemed to decide that they could fire off an email (which I never even received) and change a material term of our contract without my consent.

Ultimately, I needed to file a complaint with their claims department, further delaying my claim payout.

In the end, the third party that KP hired to evaluate the claim complaint sided with me on the first issue, and KP on the second issue. I still think KP is in the wrong and should have stood by our mutually agreed contract, but the difference in excess only amounted to about a R1,400 difference from what my contract said, and what they wanted to charge me.

So, ultimately, my primary complaint is this:

I've been a loyal customer for 7 years, and have never filed a claim. When I finally filed a claim, KP decided that they would nickel and dime me for R1,400 instead of retain me as a customer. Also, the dragged out claim process took over a month to actually pay out, which is unacceptable. I think this reflects that KP's marketing is fantastic in the way they talk about how much they care about their customers, etc. but when the rubber hits the road and they actually need to pay out a legitimate claim, they would rather save R1,400 than retain a 7 year customer who would have actually increased their insurance instead of cancelling with them. This doesn't make either ethical or business sense, so I won't be doing business with KP anymore and will also no longer recommend them.