I signed up for extras cover with health fund A about a year ago. After a check up at the dentist, I decided that I would swap to health fund B as I could get better coverage (eg unlimited general dental for a lot of needed maintenance work) for a much better price than health fund A offered comparative cover.
Health Fund Swap Fun
I swapped to health fund B a few weeks ago. Had a few missed calls which turned out to be them. Ugh. Finally called them back. It was 99% a pointless waste of time welcome call (I disagree with so much of what people think is “good” customer service – I don’t need to be welcomed, I’m a paying customer, of course I’m welcomed by you. I’m paying. Duh). But they did encourage me to claim which is very uninsurancey.
But I did find out one useful thing from health fund B. Despite signing up with them online and giving them health fund A’s details, they didn’t cancel health fund A, as the sign up process said they would.
So I went onto live chat with health fund A. Told them I needed to cancel as I was already paying for elsewhere. They gave me the little pop up thingy for filling in all my personal details. Waited while they verified it all…
Then they said “Oh, we can’t cancel memberships via live chat, you have to call”.
FFS. Why not tell me that at the start of the live chat when I said, “l want to cancel”? I’m not ambiguous about these things. I tell people exactly what I am chatting/calling for.
I called health fund A. Told them I wanted to cancel. Of course the call only is because they want to sell you a membership of their own higher tier, as I assumed. I said I swapped because I wanted unlimited general dental. Health fund A says “but we have one with that”.
So I replied, “Yes but yours was significantly more expensive”. And then they stopped arguing. They did keep telling me to keep my membership number, as it would always be mine.
I am now wondering if I’m supposed to feel some kind of affection for membership numbers. Do you feel affection for your health fund membership number? I don’t. Perhaps I need some therapy to understand love for my health fund number. Can my health fund fund that therapy? Will health fund A now have abandonment issues? WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE HEALTH FUNDS?!
So. Fun times. Processes clearly work GREAT at both health fund A and health fund B.
Much faith is held here. Much.
Oh God! I feel your pain. This whole you have to call thing is irritating & just to direct the call to their retention team. We’re doing it with telcos at the moment because we have no vodafail reception in our house. That means I do work calls in my yard. They’ve called to try & talk me out of it & I have great delight in hearing them say, ‘hello? You’re breaking up. I can’t hear you…’ to which I say, ‘I know.’
Oh the telcos are worse in my book. Health funds are annoying, telcos are outright infuriating. I had so many stupid arguments with Optus when we moved house and they refused to give me a $10 credit for ME noticing their faults. Very headdesk. Hope you get your telco issues sorted.
Ugh, Health funds are so painful to deal with! I review ours every now and then, and while I’m paying a bit more for hospital than on current plans, once I factor in the extras we are in front, as we are on a more generous corporate legacy plan that gives us heaps of benefits. But even the research is a pain in the butt!
I do have access to a corporate plan via my day job but it’s only if you buy hospital and extras, which isn’t what I want. Otherwise some corporate plans can be really good.