I was very happy with Acko Motor Insurance from 2019 onwards, and hence decided to go for Acko Health Insurance in 2023 - only to be greeted with a nightmarish experience in modern customer experience.
Here are a brief details:
1) The Consumer Protection Act clearly mentions that all companies would have to adhere to their own preselling promises and textual content mentioned in websites, emails, brochures, or any other marketing materials - used to drive the purchase decision for the customer.
2) Similarly, Acko should mandatorily mention all thresholds to their policy qualification - instead Acko Health Insurance advertises to cover EXISTING DISEASES WITHOUT ANY WAITING PERIOD as a highlighted feature to tempt customers to buy - and refuses to honour it after the customer buys the policy, stating that it was over the "threshold amount" which was never mentioned in the pre-selling times.
3) I answered the questions honestly in their pre-selling questionnaire, paid the full annual premium for the first year of Rs. 17, 853/- for a 10-Lakh family insurance policy of 2 members. A doctor calls up from Acko, asking the same questions as was provided in their pre-purchase online form and this time, they state "Oh - then you have to do some tests", and post the tests provide a SLA of 48 hours to issue the policy.
4) On not receiving any response until the next 8 days - I called up their customer service team. She apologises for the delay, and reassures that the same will happen in the next 24-48 hours. I received a call stating that one of the insured members will not be insured - and therefore only an 11-year-old child will be insured instead.
5) When I negated their reproposal offer and demanded for a full refund+applicable interests - she further informed that their mobile apps were not working, and only after then would they be able to process a refund for me.
6) Waited for a further 9 days(totalling to 23 days after purchasing the policy), and send a strong email of going to the Consumer Forum - for non-action of the refunded amount, the payment is refunded in the next 48 hours.
7) Received the refund of only the amount paid on the 31st July 2023(25 days after selling me the policy), without any interests for the delay of over 25 days.
KEY POINTS OF THE ACKO MARKETING CLAIMS THAT WAS NOT ADHERED TO:
1) Advertising as "Existing Conditions are covered, without providing any thresholds and outlining about NO waiting times as the policy highlight" - and refusing to honour this AFTER COLLECTING THE MONEY.
2) Acko could have well performed the health checks before collecting the policy money, and then state their inability to insure people BEFORE RECEIVING MONEY FROM THEM. Would save the customer a lot of time to evaluate other options instead.
3) Generating Interest money on the ’Supposed Inability to Insure’
As an example, if Acko collects Rs. 15, 000 per policy from 1, 000 customers per day, totalling Rs. 1, 50, 00, 000 per day.
For a month of 30 days, it is about Rs. 45 crores, and for a year about Rs. 540 crores.
Even if 20% of these customers are refused to be provided a valid policy after 25 days(or about a month), Acko would still earn an interest of 1% per month(@12% p.a.) from these hapless customers, who trusted their marketing promises.
Therefore, an interest earned of about Rs. 1 crores, 8 lakhs(for this example) - without any valid sales transaction taking place - is earned by Acko - without passing on the interest to the customers.