Max Bupa — 'stone age' agents...

Address:

North Goa, Goa

As an nri in saudi arabia, i'd keep in touch with the person i'd purchased my health policy from to know the status or request for services, via email or whatsapp — since it's makes no sense to make an international call for this. (The person's email address was on the company domain maxbupa.com)

One day my emails started bouncing back, with a message that the recipient address was no longer in use so i contacted the person on whatsapp — and learned that he had resigned.

Subsequently, i asked max bupa ([protected]@maxbupa.com) why i wasn't informed about this by them; in response, they apologized, and asked me to contact a specific agent, giving me his email address. (This address was on bsnl.in)

When i sent him an email to initiate contact, it kept bouncing back, indicating some error. I decided to communicate with him by phone when down in india.

At this point i assuming that this would go positively when i spoke to him...

When i did go down to india and contacted the guy, he said i could call him whenever i needed any service, so i reminded him that being in saudi arabia, i wouldn't want to make calls to india for this — unless max bupa would pay for my international calls.

I suggested we stick to emails, and when i asked why he hadn't responded to mine, he claimed that 'his computer hadn't been working for a long time.'

As an alternative, i said we could communicate on whatsapp, whereupon he stated that 'he wasn't familiar with it or using it.'

Exasperated, i asked him to give me some option to communicate with him from abroad — and at this point he assured me that his son was due to visit him soon, and would share his email address with him. (He also added that his son was doing his studies in computer engineering.)

At this point, i didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. I simply told him that i would contact him after returning to saudi arabia...

Once back i used sms to contact him many times but got no reply. Finally, i requested my father who's in goa to call the guy, & ask him for the address. The response my father got from him was very rude, as he described it.

I escalated this to max bupa and asked them to assign another agent to me, but i was told that their company policy doesn't let them reassign agents for such reasons, and so i was given the contacts of other people to approach.

You'd think that a large company has good standards and expectations in terms of employees — but seeing that max bupa employs people who don't even know how to use emails or whatsapp, i suppose that isn't the case...