Insurance Company issue

[Guest]

Mark, that's a very bizarre post.

[MarkMT 68]

How so KM?

[Guest]

Just the bit where it says

I guess some companies just haven't woken up to the fact that doing business in the internet age means that if they don't meet their customers' expectations it's just going to come back and bite them.

Going on way too much experience, often customers expectations will never ever be meet, sometimes knot even in fantasy land. Can a company be held responsible for knot living up to the impossible?

 

And you hold more weight in 2 people say bad as opposed to 3 people saying good things? One on the fence excluded.

 

My comments made with zero relation to JK's issue just more the way Mark said what he did. Nothing big or dramatic just seemed a little weird really.

[wheels 543]

Also, I don't take from the orginal post that the insurance company have actually done anything wrong, at least yet. It is their view vs the Customers view. If there is a disagreement, then it can be taken further legally.

And several have stated they have had good service. In fact more postive than negative. So why make a decision that you won't deal with so and so based on just one story, that although it most likely is correct, we will never really know. We just have to take the orignal posters word on that.

[Guest Rocket]

The ratio I believe in is that one bad mouthing nets against 20 positives - hence avoid upsetting customers. Most consumers are relatively ambivalent about who they deal with so a hint of a problem is enough to make them go next door.

[MarkMT 68]

Thanks for clarifying KM. I certainly agree that customers are not always right, so if my comment was taken as meaning that companies have to always make their customers happy or else, then I take it right back because that's not what I was trying to get at.

 

What I did mean was that companies need to understand that the potential for public scrutiny of the way they operate is very different today from what it was just 10 years ago. If companies choose to act towards their customers in a way that is likely to be perceived as unreasonable - as we know some do, it is simply a fact that the internet dramatically increases the ease and speed with which the potential damage to their reputation will spread. So there is greater pressure on companies today to not just do right by their customers, but to also be seen to do right, by both their actual and their potential customers.

 

In this particular case, I don't think the fact that some people here have had good experiences with Lumley is the issue. The issue imo is that Lumley's response to JK's particular situation, at least the way he has related it to us, really looks pretty bad. Assuming he is being straightforward, I disagree, wheels, that they have done nothing wrong. Under the circumstances, to simply assert that the failure was a result of wear and tear and that the rudder couldn't have impacted something underwater because it was shielded by the keel, and to do so apparently without reference to any substantive investigation to demonstrate that that interpretation is more likely than not, is not, I would suggest, the kind of reaction most people in the market for boat insurance today are looking for in an insurance company. And as Rocket noted, it doesn't take a lot for people to go somewhere else with their money.

 

On the other hand if Lumley had said something along the lines of, "Look based on what you've told us, we think there is reasonable doubt that this was an accident and so as it stands we're not prepared to pay out on the claim, but if you can come back to us with (let's say) a statement from your engineer and some hi-res photos of the fracture surface, we'll be willing to take another look", I think most of us would feel like they were acting reasonably and in good faith to try to balance their interests with those of their customer. Even if it turns out that the company is right on the substantive issue, my point is that if they care about their reputation they need to do a much better job of the way they deal with their customers.

 

Anyhow, sorry for so many words! I can be a little verbose. Just my $0.02. Really not trying to fuel more controversy.

[wheels 543]

Don't feel sorry for the words. That was a fair comment actually. Internet or not, there is a lot of competition out there today and you do need to go the extra yard or two with Customer relations.

An example just yesterday, we were arranging a loan for a Car. We had found a choice of two Car we wanted, we just needed the money. One was a Dealer, one was private. The Dealer just didn't want to be helpful at all. So that one sat in the background as plan B. We approached a Lending company. They said yeah sure, sent all the paper work through for us to sign, promised heaps and then the next day, the fun began. Everytime we did something, they wanted more. They went through our Bank Statement and asked details of every transaction made. Everytime a change was made, we would have to drive into Blenheim and print, Copy, Fax. It happend four times and we had to bid on the Car that night. They then said we were in a cue for money to be transfered, but there was now a problem with the wording of the Work Van insurance and they wanted us to change our insurance. Dawn had been dealing with it all and she had done well, but was at the end of her tether. I had enough and I got on the Phone to the fella and boy did I give him an earful. Then I told him where he could shove their Loan and that they had very conveniantly wasted our entire day. We had some other options and I was happy to just forget them and told them I most certainly would not be able to reccomend them to anyone.

15 minuites later, we had a call back from them and the fellow said he had gone over his managers head and if we were still interested, we didn't have to change anything with the Van and the money would be transfered immediately and he couldn't stop apologising. So we got our car. Yippeee.

[Guest]

And a good 2c it was Mark and I agree, including the JK related bit.

 

The hassle is as Rocket pointed out one person with a bad experience and interweb access (and I'm knot referring to JK here) can make a lot more noise than is fair and/or reasonable. I've seen and heard some comments made that were unreasonable and very quickly grew into a massive image problem for the companies involved. The problem the consumer now has more then ever before is having to sort the wheat from the chaff, as they say. It's getting harder by the day for both the consumer and business.

 

Many years back there was a boat that came ashore up north. The owner blamed the anchor and then put up a website (when the web was newish) having massive bitch about it. Since then that one persons comments have always hung over that product and most think it was totally true. But if they had read one more website they would have got the actual truth, the MSA Report, which was very different than the bitching website. Basically after the event the boater spoke to the local agent and grizzled. The then (since change) agent basically said 'piss off', which was a fair response if looking at the actual events. But a PR cock-up of the 1st order in the handling of a irate punter as it generated the bitching website. A classic case of one guy being handled wrong and going off, which I don't think was that unreasonable under the circumstances BUT on the other side of the coin people have been turned off that product by believing that one website when if fact that specific anchor was and still is probably the best performer any of us could ever have on our bows. Oh, the reason for the beaching was pretty clear cut, Pilot error knot product error.

 

Read something somewhere that reckoned if something was repeated more than 6 times on differing websites most people then regarded that as a fact, whether it was or knot. From my experience I'd tend to agree.

 

So after some ramblings I'd tend to say the interweb is, or at least can be, a problem for both companies and punters themselves. Is Widget Co actually a bunch of bastards or did they just piss off one person with unreasonable expectations and interweb access? Bloody hard for anyone to tell often so knot only do companies get unfairly tarnished it's equally likely a punter is turned away form the product that would suit them down to the ground 100%.

 

Knot knowing the ins and outs of JK's particular dealings it's hard to say on that one but it sure does look like that if nothing else Lumley could have worded things different or explained why a lot better.