“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.” – Hellen Keller
I can never forget the moment when I saw my son for the very first time. I was over joyed to see him. He looked fragile lying in the crib. I slowly reached out to him and touched him lightly thinking not to hurt him. I experienced love and hopefulness. At the same time fear and anxiety for what the future held for him.
I imagined him going to a good school and getting a good education. I was advised to start investing early and build a corpus. I strongly felt need of insurance to secure his future in my absence. I was emotional and believed ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. I went for their Smart Kid policy with an annual premium Rs. 75,000.
I was working in a BPO with meager salary. I paid the first premium from my savings. I struggled to pay next year. In the third year, I requested to change the frequency of premium to monthly. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance made an error in processing the request.
I wanted to exit the policy but could not. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance had already taken ~20% of premiums as fees and commissions. And the policy was still in the lock in period. I was stuck. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance exploited the emotional father. I ran pillar to post speaking with executives in call center, meeting people in office and emailing the details.
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance ignored all my requests. They were apathetic and uninterested in resolving my problem. They are more interested in selling new product than fulfilling their earlier promise of securing future of my son. They took three years to accept the mistake.
This is the beginning of my fourteen years of struggle. The harassment, the agony, the price I paid for believing in ICICI Prudential Life Insurance.
Broken Insurance Promises 