I had a pretty rough experience when trying to cancel my policy during the free-look period. It's been a whole month, and I still haven't received my refund.
Firstly, it took them a good 8 days just to acknowledge my cancellation request, and that's only after I made multiple follow-up calls to their customer care. The real problem started when I tried to cancel a ported policy, which, according to the policy brochure, isn't eligible for the free-look period. However, the welcome letter for my policy clearly states that it is indeed eligible. In insurance, it's usually the policy statements that hold the most weight. So, naturally, I raised a grievance ticket, but to my surprise, there was no response. I escalated it to grievance level 3, but again, no reply. To make matters worse, the customer care executives seemed to have no idea about the grievance tickets. There's even a separate customer care number for grievances, and that led me to wait on the line for around 10 minutes before talking to a human. However, when I did connect, I was simply forwarded to the claims department, which, unfortunately, didn't have a clue about the grievance tickets. I made the call to the grievance customer care number twice, and both times I ended up speaking to the claims department. The worst part was that each time I had to endure that 10-minute hold just to be forwarded to someone who couldn't help.
In desperation, I decided to raise a ticket on the BhimaBharosa portal, maintained by the IRDA. After waiting 5 days, I finally received a response, which stated that the free-look period doesn't apply to ported policies. But why did my welcome letter clearly mention the free-look period, and why hasn't anybody addressed that? It's been 15 days now, and I still haven't received a response to my escalation.
Meanwhile, I've requested policy cancellation with a 17.5% premium deduction (if canceled within a month), just so I can get something back. I did receive a confirmation that my request is being processed, but I haven't seen any refund credited to my bank account, and it's been 13 days.
If it's this tough to cancel a policy, I can only imagine how complicated the claims process would be. I've certainly made up my mind to steer clear of Star.
