Consumer Rights

A lot of people consider Insurance companies a necessary evil. In these modern times, insurance for life, health, house, car, etc, is absolutely essential; at the same time, people have to fight regular battles with insurance companies that try to deny their claims for some reason, or sometimes misplace documents. It is also not unknown for agents of insurance companies to either try to sell policies that bring them the most commission, or promise things that are actually not present in the insurance policy and which the insurance company denies later (and which is why the standard policy is that everything should be in writing so that the company cannot deny it later). Of couse, there are a number of people who have not had any problems with insurance companies, but there have been enough problems that consumer forums deal with insurance company problems on a regular basis. As an example, consider this case where the customer had repeated problems with the insurance company (link):

However, she did not receive documents or acknowledgement and her enquiry revealed that the insurance company had carelessly sent the documents to some other address. This, despite Gupta submitting the correct address. She added even the policy papers were prepared in the wrong name. Though she got policy papers, Gupta still gave a written request for correction of name and address for further correspondence. She also made a request that she was not able to deposit Rs 50,000 for rest of the two years because the insurance company was not giving the details enquired.
After going through the facts and fully analyzing the case, the forum, headed by Lakshman Sharma, held, “The insurance company did practically nothing to incorporate necessary corrections in respect of her name and postal address in the policy documents. Also, it did not bother to supply the original documents to her for a long time and unfortunately not supplied the same till date, which is clearly a gross lapse and grave deficiency in service on their part.”

It has been pointed out again and again that insurance companies can sometimes act like totally anti-consumer, unwilling to consider the best interests of consumers. It can get difficult for consumers to deal with companies that are cold and unfriendly, and consumers forums provide a lot of help in cases such as these.

Posted on March 3rd, 2009 under Compensation, Complaint, Consumer Court, Insurance, Punishment. Tags: Company, Complaint, Consumer, Consumer Forum, Decision, India, Insurance, Insurance Policy, Judgment, Penalty, Punishment. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.