PSG Incapable of Providing Half Decent Service

Based on my dealings with PSG, I must say they remind me of brokers from the old Apartheid regime. Back in the day mostly Afrikaans previously advantaged people in SA had brokers & because they inherently dealt with brokers more, it was easier for them to understand Long Term Insurance jargon and T&C's. It is my understanding that TCF was introduced for the reason of minimizing miscommunication, giving suitable advice & also most essentially treating all customers fairly amongst other things. Sadly, this was not my experience at all.

I inherited PSG from my previous employer, if it were up to my & based on my personal preference I wouldn't have any dealings with PSG not even in a million years. It all started in 2019 when I had a Disability claim with Discovery & PSG were the brokers for my then employer. A few years ago, I emailed Minza van den Heuvel (Meinke) a query to which she did not respond to even until today. When I complained to my employer at the time's payroll dept, they just said all queries to this person must be sent from them so apparently Minza was too good to respond to me. Be that as it may, when I resigned from my ex-employer in May, the company's payroll dept emailed me to say I will now be dealing directly with yes, you guessed it, Minza van den Heuvel (Meinke) for ICB queries and Mari Smit for Medical Aid. Fast forward to receiving my first ICB claim directly from Discovery I got an email from PSG which basically stated that I would only get paid R812.20 but I was liable to pay Discovery a medical aid premium of R5020. Letter was emailed to me, I had just started a new job at the time & was in training for a month so I didn't have time to go through the document to make heads or tails of what the contents actually meant. Now considering every ICB review letter I have ever received from Discovery states the following "The broker is the communication point between the member, policyholder and insurer; we therefore ask that you please ensure that the member is educated on the details of this letter" . So when I queried with Minza how Discovery confirmed on the 9th June they would pay the ICB benefit for May within the next 2 working days but only gave me an extension to pay my medical aid the very following day 10th June, this is when C R A P hit the fan, also they would only pay the ICB of R812.20 as per the calculation Minza emailed me on the 7th June from Discovery but I was liable to pay DHMS R5020 on the 10th June? So ofcourse 9 June I email Minza & literally say "Ok wait, I don't understand..." And the response was pretty much bottom line I had to pay DHMS the next day or my medical aid would lapse. Isn't the broker supposed to email this in layman's terms & explain in detail? But alas, this did not happen. I had timeously, upon receiving a new job offer informed ex-employer, PSG & Discovery details of the new job, even emailed them the job offer so it was not my problem they overpaid me end April ICB which I only put two & two together when in May they said they would only pay me an absurbly low ICB amount. After this, I also never heard from Minza again. So because I queried & said I didn't understand, she took upon herself not to deal with me any longer. Thereafter, I had to deal with Lydia Koekemoer who emailed me forms to have an RA set up. She emailed me forms to complete but some of the required documents were only sent to me after querying where the documents were that I was meant to tick off confirming receipt as per their FAIS Control Sheet. She also requested I sign every page of the FAIS sheet, which I did, so as not to prolong this process any further but on the last page of the document 'Record of Advice' i.e Needs determined, Products considered, Product recommended, Reasons for recommendation - I literally wrote on the form that everything on this page under the various headings as stated above were completely Blank so I signed anyway. After emailing the forms back to Lydia, I didn't even so much receive an acknowledgement of receipt of my email. This is the type of service I have come to expect from PSG. How is FAIS applicable if you as a broker request your client to sign a form you clearly didn't even bother completing a Needs analysis for or if you did, you just didn't bother to complete?

However that's not all. On the 3rd Aug, I received an email from Monique Johnson at PSG, now the new contact person I would deal with - as per the Discovery letter which states the following : "...the partial monthly Income Continuation Benefit will be reconciled against the submitted payslip for July 2022. As from 01 Aug 2022, the monthly Income Continuation Benefit will be reinstated to the full benefit." So logically that should mean since I worked until the 14 July 2022, surely the reason I had to submit my July payslip to Discovery was for them to see the salary amount I received was not a full salary, obviously the partial benefit I received for June opposed to July was supposed to be adjusted accordingly as the letter stated to cover the no salary received for 15 July - 31 July. But this was not the case at all. When I emailed this very question to Monique 05 Aug asking her to explain what then did Discovery mean when they said in the doc that the ICB for July would be reconciled against the submitted payslip for July, she was incapable of explaining to me bearing in mind Discovery's letters state PSG should educate their clients on the contents of their letters but the PSG employees lack the expertise to do so? Monique then emailed me 15 Aug saying she forwarded my query to Discovery & they said they had sent my email to the 'Payments team' for them to assist with clarity. To date, I have not received feedback even after asking for feedback yet again 3 days ago but my email has been ignored. In the meantime, lo and behold this query sat with the 'Payments team' for 5 days & they still managed to S t u f f up my Aug ICB payment since the FULL ICB benefit was in fact NOT reinstated. So in essence, I as the client will suffer. Because, they did not top up the partial ICB payment for July to cover no salary received 15 July - 31 July, I wasn't able to pay all my bills. Now this month, end Aug ironically enough my DHMS debit order will not go through successfully due to insufficient funds which will not only affect my bank account negatively but I will also be held liable by my bank for unpaid debit order penalty fees not to mention that again this month I will not be able to cover all my bills!

If it were up to me I would not deal with PSG due to incompetence but I have no choice as I am stuck with PSG. I honestly loathe every interaction with PSG employees. So beware & look at all the other bad service reviews here on HP, rather save yourself tears and go with a different broker because it seems like even the senior employees need some serious customer service training they so obviously clearly lack.