Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Insurance: good claim service, roundabout technical support

When I hit the bear in June (http://magree.blogspot.com/2014/06/bear-with-me-as-i-am-mad-and-sad.html) I received prompt and courteous service from the online representative to the adjuster to the auto body shop.

When I tried to find where the iPhone App to access my information, I had to go through a cycle of three messages.  On the envelope from some recent documents, there was an ad to have insurance ID cards on my phone.  “Download it today in the Apple App Store or Google Play.”  I could not find it in the Apple App Store no matter what search words I used.

I sent email to the insurance company.  The first reply was to supply my insurance ID and phone number.  I supplied those and received the reply “available in… the Apple store…”

Surely she couldn’t mean a physical Apple Store.  I tried iTunes and bingo!  I sent that news back and received no reply, not even a thank-you for the clarification.

In 2013 there were some rave reviews for the App but the only 2014 reviewer claimed it would not accept his ID and password.  I downloaded it anyway.

None of the screens showed me my insurance ID card, no matter how many promising links I tried.  Then I figured I had to click the lock in the upper right had corner.  Then I had a screen asking for my username and password.  Now I could navigate to copies of the IDs for both cars.  But, oh, it was so easy to misinterpret where the navigation triangles would take me.  Often I wound up back at the log-in screen.

All-in-all I would say that the app was more inconvenient than digging around in the glove compartment for the ID card.  When I hit the bear, I think I found our insurance papers in less time that it would take me to log on to the app.  Also, I don’t need an app to call in a claim; I have the claim number in my contact list.  I can find that phone number in about the same time as I could find the app icon on the right screen.