All those of you who have or are planning to buy any insurance policy from ICICI - be very careful! These guys are employing every trick in the book to mint money from unsuspecting customers.
I have a two-wheeler motor insurance policy from ICICI Lombard(number 3005/53282672/00/000) that expires on January 14, 2009. When I got the policy renewal letter, I found that the premium had gone up to Rs. 1020 from Rs. 780 last year. Surprising, considering the vehicle hadn’t gotten any newer! On going through the break-up of charges on the website, I found that this was because in addition to hiking the basic premium, they had also added two optional covers without my permission:
Of these, it was the second one that really had me stumped! A legal liability for paid driver implies that if I’ve hired a driver to drive the vehicle and he meets with an accident while driving it, then the insurance company will take care of compensating him or his family for his injury or loss of life. Now, while this is fine for a car, clearly no sensible person is ever going to appoint a driver for a bike! So why would any insurance company add this option to a two-wheeler policy? And to top it, there was no way to remove these add-ons either.
So I called up ICICI Lombard customer care at 1800-209-8888 and asked for an explanation. The smart aleck at the other end obviously knew precious little about insurance or IRDA regulations, but that sure didn’t stop him from fibbing his way out of my questions.
I asked him why ICICI had added these optional covers without asking me. To this, he said that IRDA had made these covers mandatory from this year. I said I didn’t believe him. Why would the IRDA make something like paid driver’s insurance cover mandatory? Surely they were smarter than that! To this, he said he would confirm the same with his senior. He put me on hold to confer with his senior, who apparently was of the same opinion that these add-ons were now mandatory.
I told him I still didn’t believe him. I asked him to give one logical reason why IRDA would pass such a rule. At this point, he suddenly changed track and started muttering something about how "legal liability for paid driver" wasn’t really an insurance cover for a paid driver, but had something to do with third party damage!
Now I was getting really pissed at this guy’s foolish answers. I asked him, what the hell was third-party cover for then? He again mumbled something that didn’t make any sense to me. Finally I got fed up and told him that unless ICICI agreed to remove these add-ons from my policy, I would move to another insurer. He again mumbled the same thing about IRDA having made it mandatory and stuff.
By now, I realised that this guy was either very stupid or he had explicit instructions from his managers to justify any additional charges on customers in any manner possible, never mind whether it made sense or not. I said OK and banged down the phone.
Clearly, this is a ploy by ICICI to make money from unsuspecting customers, as they know very well that many people will just pay up without even bothering to check the break-up of the charges. I never expected that ICICI would stoop to this level to boost their income.
I have made up my mind to move to another insurer, probably Bajaj Allianz. But I don’t want to leave this matter here. I want to let the senior people at ICICI know what lies their customer support people are telling customers.
Future Action:
ICICI Lombard’s website mentions a Ms. Preeti Lochan(Manager, Service Quality) as the second point of contact, if customer support is not able to resolve queries satisfactorily. Hopefully she’s far more sensible than her customer service folks! If not, I’ll be wasting some more time.
I have e-mailed their customer support. Let’s see what they have to say. If I don’t receive any response, I’ll mail Ms. Lochan.
Update: Jan 27, 2009
Finally, after a week of waiting, I wrote a mail to Ms. Lochan via ICICI Lombard’s website. I actually thought it didn’t go through, because I got some server error when I submitted the complaint. So I was surprised when she called me.
I appreciated her for having called me and explained the whole situation. She heard me out and apologised for the whole issue, but tried to justify her customer care’s lies saying that they probably didn’t know the rules fully! Well, if that’s the case, then they shouldn’t be sitting there, should they? I didn’t like her justifying their action.
Anyway, she called again after two days and said that I can renew my policy without the add-ons. But by then I had already moved to Bajaj Allianz and I told her that. I also suggested to her that they allow adding/removing add-ons on the website while renewing the policy online. She said she’ll look into it.
Related Issue:
I remember, when I initially took my vehicle insurance from ICICI Lombard, my credit card was charged twice for the premium! I had to run from pillar to post and make several calls and three visits to their office near Lifestyle to get it refunded. Their office guys are totally useless and completely not willing to help at all.