Nightmare Experience with Metropolitan Life

Dear Mrs. Wood.

We acknowledge receipt of your complaint on HelloPter.

We regret to learn that you have encountered difficulties with the claim for your late father on your husband's policy.

We have assessed the call and acknowledge the consultant confirmed the incorrect parent's sum insured.  Our Contact Centre's management is addressing the incorrect information provided byt he consultant in line with our internal protocols to ensure it does not happen again.

It remains a basic principle of insurance that cover is provided (by the insurer) in return for premiums paid by (or on behalf of) the insured.

When you husband took this staff group scheme and each time he reviewed his policy, we posted him an updated membership certificate confirming the benefits on his policy as well as the premium he would have to pay for such benefits.  

We are therefore of the view that your husband ought reasonably to have known what cover he selected for each of the participants on the policy - first his parents, later for your father when he added his father-in-law and even later for your mother when he added his mother-in-law to his policy and that he selected a different sum insured for your mother than his other parents were covered for.   

Unfortunately the consultant who assisted you encountered technical problems and instead of asking someone else to assist you looked up the information on an alternative system and made a correlation error in the process, reading out the mother-in-laws cover instead of the father-in-law's cover, which was listed above it on the screen.  We don't use this as an excuse, but wish to sketch the circumstances to you under which a completely human error occurred.

When we paid your father's claim, we paid your husband the benefit he app**** for and that he was payingpremiums for.  Paying any more in terms of the claim is not contractual and would be unfairly enriching your husband, at the expense of our other policyholders, which would not be treating them fairly.

We are aware that contact centre management have been in communication with you around this matter and has offered an amount in compensation for the poor service.

The above being said, one of our Client Care Assessors will investigate all the facets of your complaint and revert back to you via return email.

Regards

Client Care Team