Unauthorised Upgrade

<p>From our debit order we noticed a sharp increase in premium, Stratum took the Liberty of Upgrading us to the Elite plan from the Comprehensive because they discontinued it. They claim to have sent a mail in November to this effect which to date has not been received. When queried with them by mail no response was received, when queried with them telephonically we were told that their mails were down and they were catching up! The initial response to the mail was "Please take note that the Comprehensive option has been completely phased out for 2017 and all the members who were on the cover previously were automatically upgraded to the Elite option "</p> <p> </p> <p>I advised them telephonically and in previous emails that I did not want to be upgraded and wanted the Co-Evolution plan which was substantially cheaper, and that this needs to be backdated to 1 Jan with a credit for the Jan debit order, to which they simply refused.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is called negative opt-in, in other words if they send you a mail and you do not respond they take it as acceptance, which it against the law. Annual price increases are commonplace, however, a 30.6% increase is beyond a joke.</p> <p> </p> <p>The difference in credit requested is R95 and they refuse to budge, this is how flexible they are. I wonder how much it will cost them in man-hours to defend this with the insurance Ombudsman as that will be my next port of call !!</p>