Birla Sun Life Insurance is a very bad insurance company in all aspects, more so when it comes to after sales service and customer support. They are only interested in conning people to buy their policies and once an unsuspecting customer has paid and bought a policy, he has to go through a lot of misery to get any service from Birla Sun Life.
They do not care a hoot for the customer. The poor customer is left to the mercy of an incompetent staff. I can give many examples of bad customer service that I have faced in the last 3+ years that I held a ULIP policy with them. I was waiting for the lock-in period of 3 years to get out of this trap, but even in the final stage, they are giving the worst customer service to me. I filed a surrender form along with the policy on 15-June-2009. At the time of submitting, the branch office told me that processing will be completed and payment will be made with a maximum wait time of 15 working days.
I had requested for a direct credit to my bank account and also gave a cancelled cheque as requested by the branch. Now, after 17 working days, I have still not received any communication, let alone the due amount. So, I call up the customer service number and the guy who answered the call, tells me that a mail has been posted to my address already on 24-June (which has never reached me, so I suspect, this was a lie just to let me think that they had done some work on my surrender request).
The guy goes on to say that I will be getting a cheque in my address in about 6 days. I was extremely unhappy with this, because I had specifically requested for a direct bank credit and also gave a cancelled cheque. I ask him to check this and he puts me on hold for 3-4 minutes. Then he comes back and tells me that there will be another update in 6 days (please note, he was not saying that payment will be made in 6 days, he was talking about another update to be given in 6 days). My dissatisfaction at this point had increased to a level, where I demanded to talk to his supervisor immediately. He was somehow able to get his supervisor on line for me and she then gave me an assurance that the next update will be provided in 2 days (still note that they are not talking about payment).
I can not imagine any customer facing company doing such practices - delaying the process inordinately (thereby making cash for themselves through interest, I suspect) and then giving out senseless updates through customer support.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY A BAD INSURANCE COMPANY TO DEAL WITH. ONCE YOU PUT YOUR MONEY IN, YOU WILL REGRET IT.