Termination of Membership

My Parents, who are both 88 years old, has been members of medihelp since 2009. The never failed to pay one premium, but love and behold, in July this year they missed one premium due to insufficient funds in their bank account. According to medihelp they phoned my father and also send him an e-mail. My father is deaf and does not have an e-mail address. Then medihelp went ahead and terminated their membership. The letters they sent him arrived in the small town where they live two weeks after there membership were terminated.

When I learned about this I immediately contacted medihep and explained the whole situation, trying to reinstate my parent's membership. I went ahead and got third party authorisation, so I could act on behalf of him. I also changed the banking details to mine, to make sure that this does not happen again.

To make a long story short-medihelp refuses to reinstate them. I wrote e-mails, phoned,begged.....

According to them the rules of Medihelp does not allow reinstatement of membership, and according to medihelp rules, and to "Law 131 of 1998" they are allowed to do what they did.

This may all be true, but I think this is so unfair, and as far as I am concerned *********. To just terminate two old peoples medical aid while they are in the twilight of there lives, and in desperate need of it, is as far as I am concerned a disgrace. What happened to "treating customers fairly".

What this shows me is that medihelp has no empathy. Did my parents perhaps reached an age where they became an "inconvenient truth"to medihelp, and they found the perfect loophole to get rid of them......

During the little research I did about Medihelp I found that this is not such an isolated occurrence. Medihelp boasts that they are trying to get more young members to join them, but in the process it looks as if they are also trying to get rid of the old ones.

May this be a warning to the old aged members of Medihelp.