The husband of one of my co-workers died about 1 month ago. They have children at home. Then her mother died two weeks later. My co-worker has been devastated.
She has not been back to work yet. But I heard today that she is being given a hard time trying to get the insurance company that carried her husband's life insurance policy to pay up. So far, they have not.
When she called them up so start the claims process on his life insurance policy, they refused to speak to her. They claimed that their privacy policy only allows them to speak to the policy holder.
Uh... the policy holder is DEAD bozos! It is a life insurance policy. You are NEVER going to get a policy holder to call you to file a claim on a life insurance contract.
That didn't matter. They company refused to bend their policy. Finally she got a hold of a manager who accepted that she might have a claim. It took 3 days to get this far.
Now they are throwing other monkey wrenches into the works. They now refuse to pay a claim unless she gets his will "validated" by the Western Australian Supreme Court. WTF? What about the designated benefitiary on the policy (HIS OWN WIFE!). Not good enough. They claim that someone might come along later and claim they were due some of the insurance money and sue the insurance company.
Have you ever heard of such hogwash?
So now she has to pay $500 to start the processes of getting her husband's will "validated" by the courts. God knows how long that will take.
It gets worse. Now they company is insisting that she sign a waiver that will allow them to get all his Medicare records. They seem to be on a fishing expedition to find some clue that he might have been sick years ago when they took the policy out. Never mind that they are married, had children, and covering the risk of his death was a prudent thing to do.
In the last month, she has had to pay for 2 funerals, and she has not been able to work. They haven't even sent her any money at all to help her. Not even $10k to get her through.
This just pisses me off. They really need state insurance regulators in Australia like we have in the US. The only body that controls insurance companies here in a worthless and toothless federal agency in Canberra.
1 comment:
Insurance companies in the U.S. are a bit more responsive (most of the time), and it's one of the rare times you can thank the lawyers. We have (as you may recall from growing up in the states) a species of claim called a "bad faith denial of coverage" against insurance companies. You can get huge damages if you can show that an insurance company jerked you around. Best of luck to that poor lady.
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