After changing my health insurance twice in the last four years, last week I finally bought an ICICI Lombard policy from Policybazaar.com, after which I received this hamper from the company yesterday!
Initially, I had health insurance from National Insurance Company, which I stopped due to a very low sum assured and took a policy from Max Bupa Company. The next year, at the time of renewal, they increased the premium, which was unacceptable because I was told that its premium would never increase. But this time they made a bigger statement and said that this premium increase has happened due to tax increase by the government, and you must have misunderstood, sir. The premium increases for every policy, but after completely understanding your problem, we recommend you another policy whose premium will increase only once in every 5 years. Till now, I had already paid them around 60,000 Rupees, and I had not used it even once. I did not want to waste this amount, so I upgraded to that new policy, but the very next year once again, they increased the premium by 6,000 Rupees, which was more than 20% of the premium paid last year.
I contacted them again and asked what this was. Last time, you clearly said that the premium will increase only once in five years, and now, in just one year, you have increased the premium again. They again repeated the same thing that these rates have increased due to government guidelines, and every company has increased it, so we cannot do anything about it. When I asked for a copy of the government circular, they refused. I searched on my own, but I did not find any such news. I was feeling betrayed. Till now, I had paid them a total of around 100,000 Rupees. I had never taken any claim, and now, by trapping me in this policy trap, they are continuously lying and increasing the premium every year.
Finally, last month, I visited the Policy Bazaar website and told them about my experience so far. They told me that some companies tell any lie to sell the policy, and once you buy the policy, they keep on increasing the premium as per their wish. According to my needs, Policy Bazaar suggested policies from HDFC ERGO and ICICI Lombard to me. I liked ICICI Lombard the most among these because my wife was a policyholder of this company before marriage, and she had experienced everything from their renewal to the claim settlement process, so this was the best real-life feedback for me. I got my policy ported and got all the benefits transferred without wasting the money of previously paid premiums, and that too at almost 35% less premium.
This was a good deal without a doubt! The main point of today's blog is that, of course, bad times come without any warning, but we take health insurance for our old age so that our lifetime earnings and savings are not spent on paying hospital bills, and that is why it becomes even more important to take health insurance from the right company. In my country, the facility of porting policies has come only recently; before that, people were cheated even more, and they had no option other than tolerating the arbitrariness of the companies. So, based on my experience, I would say that before taking health insurance for yourself, know every important thing and get all the benefits of the policy in writing from the company, so that in future if they go back on their word, you can go to the consumer court or other such places against them. :)
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Note:
English is not my first language. So sometimes I use 'Google Translate'. Please don't think that anything I have written in this blog has been copied from somewhere or is AI-generated.
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