Let me share a horrible experience that I have been going through with SBI General Insurance company. Please read this review before you buy insurance from SBI General and think of the situation I am going through and imagine what will happen during insurance claim.
Early in Jan this year, I had raised an enquiry on Home Insurance products on SBI General website. The very next day someone from customer.connect@sbigeneral.in connected with me over Whatsapp at first and then, via email to sell the insurance. Initially, I was suspicious as this email ID is not mentioned anywhere on the SBI General website. Also, they will share quotation on simple colourful spreadsheets with no logo of SBI General.
Since the domain ID was "sbigeneral.in" I procured the insurance product by paying 30K premium. I received my premium acknowledgement over the email. I was informed that my policy would be generated in 24-48 hours time.
It has been more than 20 days since I procured the home insurance product and waiting for the policy to be shared. I tried to reach out to the customer.connect@sbigeneral.in team over Whatsapp and via emails but they didn’t respond after they sold the product to me. Later, I was told that the policy could not be generated due to technical glitch. Frustrated with the service from SBI General team, I recently raised my complaint with IRDAI(Bima Bharosa token no. 01-24-015675) and requested SBI General for the refund since, policy was never issued to me.
Post my complaint, the company asked me to send documents - Identification proof, address proof, premium paid bank statement, passport photo, blank cancelled cheque(all in a consoldated pdf format), which I shared two days back and still waiting for the refund notification.
Each time you follow up with the SBI General they will auto-generate an acknowledgement ID but no one from the customer service team will ever call you to resolve the issue because ’they simply do not care’. I have several IDs generated by the Noreply CRM portal - 128790, 134833, 181887 with no commitment on the timeline of refund. Also, who is going to pay the interest for the money which is taken by SBI General Insurance in the name of sale of insurance product? No answer!
Now I am planning to register my case with the Insurance Ombudsman to get the refund. It seems to me this is going to be dragged for long but I shall make sure that I try all the options available to me.
In summary, my key advices are the following:
1. Avoid SBI General Insurance Company if you can.
2. Never respond to the customer.connect@sbigeneral.in via Whatsapp or via email and never buy insurance products through them. If they try to connect you ask them to contact you via customer.care@sbigeneral.in email ID.
3. Visit the SBI General office if you really want to purchase SBI General Insurance Company’s product. In that way, you would atleast know who to catch in case, things go sideways.
4. Still be prepared for the harassments you may encounter at any stage of the policy lifecycle.