Adding to the trauma of an armed mugging

I've been a client of Naked for close to 3 years and have never claimed. The deciding factor in choosing Naked as my insurance provider was the large number of very positive reviews and comments about how caring, compassionate, kind, efficient, and helpful the team is - especially during claim time.

Two days ago I got ****** at knifepoint, my backpack was ******, and I was thrown into the bushes. This has severely triggered my existing PTSD and I truly needed Naked to have my back during this extremely challenging time. I immediately went to the SAPS to open a case and file a report and sent the case number and scans of the report to Naked as soon as I received them. I also completely the required steps on the app to submit a claim, even thought the last thing I felt like doing at that time was taking a selfie video. And that is when Naked started to mess me around.

First, I suddenly started receiving dozens of emails stating the "selfies" for my specified items needed attention. Literally EVERY single item that I have specified individually was suddenly being questioned. The pictures were not good, the invoice images were no good, nothing was any good. The thing that makes me VERY suspicious about this is that those images have been approved on the app since I first joined Naked and added my items - so, nearly three years! If there was an issue with the photos, why were they approved to begin with, and why wait almost 3 years to raise these supposed issues with me?! Why did it only happen as soon as I'd submitted my very first claim?! It is VERY lucky that I kept offline copies of the photos I took of my items as I obviously cannot take new photos of the items that have been ******!!!

The app has also been incredibly buggy of late and I have been having endless troubles with it. My premium shows up at two different rates in two different parts of the app (one rate shows on the home screen and a different rate shows under my Contents), my excess keeps switching to different amounts and I have to manually change it every time I go onto the app, and photos of my items keep disappearing from the app! When I tried to submit my claim the first time, the entire app froze and crashed and then wouldn't allow me to access the Claim option for several hours. This happened again when I tried to add the case number and police report scans.

And, to top off this terrible experience I'm having with trying to claim after a traumatic event, the agent assigned to my claim (Kelebogile Mochine) intentionally tried to mislead me into taking an action that would have had my claim denied!!! The phone that was ****** did not have a SIM in it so I was unsure how to blacklist it, and asked the agent to please advise how best to do this, so that I can add the ITC number they require to my claim details. The agent responded that I should just put "N/A or None" for the ITC number and did not offer ANY assistance or information on how to blacklist a phone without a SIM. Their response didn't seem right to me, so I (FORTUNATELY) didn't follow it. Instead, I contacted my service provider for my other phone and asked them if they could help me get the ****** phone and laptop blacklisted. They said it was no trouble at all and immediately sent me the forms to complete and send back for blacklisting (using the IMEI and serial numbers). Meanwhile, I'd followed up with the agent to ask them to confirm that not having the ITC number would not affect my claim, as I wasn't convinced about putting "N/A or None" and they then said that my claim would not be processed without that ITC number!!! Proving that they had originally instructed me to do something that would have halted my claim and likely gotten it rejected! This is *********, *******, and downright sickening. And to top that off, when I told them how upset I was that they tried to instruct me to take an action that would result in my claim being denied, I received a VERY snotty and snippy email trying from them to try and back out of what they'd said!

My claim has not been assigned to an external validator instead, which I hope will be better, but I am gut-wrenchingly disappointed at this "service" from Naked. They say so much about caring and how they NEVER actively try to look for ways to reject claims, but that has not been what this experience has shown me at all. It feels VERY much like they are trying to set me up for a claim rejection and I'm no longer even convinced that the app troubles are just technical glitches. It is too coincidental that all this has been happening since I submitted my claim, when they've had no issues with the photos or invoices or anything for almost three years prior to this. It feels very much like they're trying to swindle me out of my claim, instead of assisting me after I was ******, injured, and heavily traumatised. Which is NOT what they claim to stand for.

I had such high hopes after reading all the positive reviews about how simple and easy and quick the claims process is, and how helpful and caring the team is during times that are not good for anyone - because no one claims from insurance because something good has happened! I cannot believe that after what I've been through this week, the people I've spent years paying to assist me in just such a time, are actively working against me and adding to the trauma. This is not transparent at all, and not what I've spent years paying premiums to experience now when I actually need help. Shame on you, Naked, shame on you.