My sister was forcefully made to open a health policy of 1300 with SBI General Insurance while opening a SBI bank account. This happened back in 2017. I was unaware. Last year on July she asked SBI branch to stop the auto debit and received a receipt that it will be stopped soon. This year again a auto debit was made by SBI General. So we wrote to SBI Customer Care and 30 days after that to the nodal officer. But received no reply. We called the SBI customer care, and they said they are unable to stop auto debit and this has to be done through SBI General Insurance.
We tried to stop the auto debit through SBI General Insurance's website and found that they have intentionally made the page such that the capcha always shows error. And trying to cancel the policy always throws page not found error. Tried through their app, and found that there is no cancellation and no auto debit stoppage option.
So, we wrote to SBI General Insurance customer care regarding cancellation of the policy. They replied to cancel the policy through SBI YONO app and closed the ticket. We checked on YONO app and found that it shows no policy exists and when we tried to add the policy, it kept giving error.
So we wrote again to SBI General customer care keeping in CC head customer care, and said that in case if they do not cancel the policy, we will take this matter to RBI Ombudsman and IRDAI. They replied back asking for KYC and requested a few docs like PAN card, Masked aadhar, policy certificate and consent letter of insured as the email id is not linked to the policy. We obliged and sent the docs.
Today I received a call from a SBI General employee who kept asking about the policy, kept nagging that why we did not do anything for so many years, he had no idea about the policy, and asked to send him everything to his mail. I rejected and told him that whatever docs and other things I will send will only be through official customer care mail id only.
We havent received any reply from their customer care yet.
So, my question to fellow dimers is, is it this hard to cancel a health policy?
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Yup, kept that option as a last resort. If nothing happens even after all this then will have to opt for keeping lower balance than the auto debit amount. But I will file a complaint with RBI Ombudsman before that if they do not comply.
Why didn't you visit SBI General Insurance branch so far?
The booklet provided by SBI Gen Insurance mentions the SBI bank branch as their branch. As mentioned, we had already provided a written request at that branch to stop the auto debit on July 2023, but they did not do anything about that, it seems. I have a receipt of that too. Also I live in a different state, so its not possible to visit their head branch just for a simple service like cancellation.
Update: SBI General finally closed the policy and returned part of auto debit amount according to their policy.
